


Elysium

by Aliset



Category: Beauty and the Beast (TV 1987)
Genre: A small forest worth of pining, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergent, Classic BATB, F/M, SND, Season 2 Fix it, Season Three? I don't know her, Season three? What season three?, Wanton Use and Possible Abuse of Egyptian Mythology, We are so far past canon that we're in another universe entirely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-10
Updated: 2010-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 55,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26783893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliset/pseuds/Aliset
Summary: What happened in the cave, and after
Relationships: Catherine Chandler/Vincent (Beauty and the Beast 1987)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1- A Vision Softly Creeping

_It only takes the tiniest of fires sometimes  
to light the way you knew was always there.  
In the heart of matters, it's the journey keeps us warm,  
the lights that lead us where we are to go.  
May you raise your eyes and know with every step:  
we are not alone. _  
\---S.J. Tucker, “Come to the Labyrinth”

\--//--  
Chapter 1: A Vision Softly Creeping

The trek down into the lower catacombs was a long river of night, seemingly without beginning or end. Catherine would have been terrified, back in the days when she needed a candle or a night light to chase back the shadows, but now, other fears held her captive. There was Father, whose tight-lipped grimness told her all she needed to know about what might be waiting for them, and Pascal, uncharacteristically somber, whose eyes met hers then flickered away. Their silences said more than words: Vincent had gone beneath the catacombs to die. 

She hardly needed someone to tell her that in any case. Their bond was wide open and Vincent's terror and self-loathing were tearing at her with a savage force, louder than any storm. _What have we done to you?_ Catherine wondered. How could someone who loved, who was loved, by so many, hate himself so? And why hadn't she seen this coming? Surely, as bound as they were, she must have sensed something...but she had not. Only his sadness and a mild sort of aching despair had seeped through their bond and Catherine knew he had hid himself from her, even in this.

They had to stop at least once or twice; the path was rocky and uneven and not one that someone with Father's injury should have attempted, but no one would have asked him to stay behind either. He took her arm when he stood, ostensibly to steady himself against his limp but, Catherine thought, he needed the contact too. Pascal was a ways in front of them, his torchlight casting flickering shadows on the rocks when she finally looked over at Father. “You'll bring him home,” Father said. “You must believe that.”

Catherine looked down the distant rocky corridors where, very faintly, she thought she could hear roaring. She had brought him out of madness once before, but that was a child's tantrum compared to the tempest raging inside Vincent now. He was in such pain and if he truly had lost himself, what could she do that would save him? All she had was her love for him and it might not be enough this time. But a life without Vincent? Impossible. Unthinkable. She squared her shoulders. “I will,” she replied. “I have to.”

It was another hour's deep, descending climb before the roaring grew more distinct. Unlike the perpetual chill of the inhabited tunnels, this section was far below the earth and much warmer. The heat was almost oppressive and she wondered again how Vincent had made it this far, as sick as he was. “He always did like the dark places,” Father said, glancing around him and looking every bit as uneasy as she felt. “The last time...”

“'The last time,' what? What happened?” Catherine asked, feeling impatient---as she knew Vincent himself did at times---at the older man's reticence. 

“When this came on him the last time...the dark was what comforted him,” Father replied. “It was as if some part of him feared the light.”

It was only a turn of phrase, but Catherine thought that it wasn't helping Vincent at all to be constantly described as being two separate beings. He was just Vincent, one being, one man...and she loved him, all of him. Another wave of grief and rage tore through her and she shivered in spite of the heat. Father guided her to a rocky outcropping and Pascal halted. “Catherine, you don't look at all well. Sit down for a moment.” He peered at her, grey eyes sharp and assessing. “Is it the bond?” he asked, sitting down next to her and resting his hip against the rocky ledge.

She nodded. “There's such rage in him, such fear and grief. This...whatever this is, it's destroying him.”

Catherine was startled when she felt Father clasp her hand. “It's always been his battle, the war he always had to fight alone. The last time, he...died, but came back to us. This time, he has you.”

She blinked back tears, knowing she couldn't give into her own grief and fear if she was to be of any use to Vincent. “Thank you, Father,” she said. She stood, a bit unsteadily. “We need to keep going.” 

At length, they reached the long narrow corridor where the gathering storm of sound was the loudest. Mouse crouched a few feet outside the cave entrance, plainly terrified. Father bent down and touched his shoulder and offered a shaky smile. Mouse looked up and his eyes lightened when he saw Catherine. “Make Vincent okay?”  
She forced a smile she did not feel. “If I can, Mouse.”

The storm of feeling raged through the bond---fear, hate, despair, self-loathing. Catherine took one step towards the cave entrance and Father grabbed her arm. “Catherine, please!”

She met his eyes levelly. “Father, he is my life. Without him…there is nothing.” The words were out, leaden in the air, but she had never meant them more. Better to ask the sun to stop rising than to imagine a life without Vincent in it. 

Father blinked rapidly and released her. Catherine began the long walk to the entrance to the cave. Slowly, Catherine recovered some of her night vision, enough to see faint details in the path…Vincent’s halting footprints, as if he’d swayed nearly to collapse before entering. A dark heap of cloth right at the entrance was Vincent’s cloak.  
She ducked her head and entered the cave and was just able to see his outline, a darker shade among all the other shades of grey, crouched in a corner. The roaring was powerful, terrifying, a wall of sound and fury signifying only a man pushed beyond all mortal limits. “Vincent,” she said softly, and walked towards him. 

The darker streaks in his matted mane she knew instantly to be blood. The same streaks coated his hands and the defined muscles of his chest and ribcage. He wore no clothes and she realized why with a heartbreaking suddenness. Animals wore no clothing. 

“Vincent,” Catherine said again, but the harsh roaring continued, as if it was torn from his throat. Vincent rose to his full height and stared down at her. There was no recognition in that cold blue gaze. 

The emotions flooding their bond were inchoate, fractured. Overriding everything was his terror and rage and it grabbed and tore at all rational thought. Catherine tried to project all of her love back to him through the bond, but it was lost in the deluge of his feelings. She forced herself to meet his eyes, knowing if she showed even a hint of fear, he might strike out. He wouldn't know he had done it, but it would hardly matter: she'd be dead or injured just the same.  
As if in slow-motion, she saw his right hand rise, the killing hand, and time stopped.

***  
He had no words. Words were for men and he wasn't. Everything was reduced to sensation only, to the fearsome Other he chased in the shadows of the cave, to the grief and terror that rose and drowned him in black, tarry waves. He was a creature of feelings only and though he knew that there were lighted caverns where he had a name and a family and a woman who loved him beyond thought or reason, they seemed so far away and not for him in any case. 

He was not a man. 

The last shuddering bits of awareness flared and died at the sight of the small creature who entered his lair. He was dangerous, a threat...foolish that she should come so close. He roared at her in warning, but she came still closer. She had a name too, much as he also had a name, but he could remember neither of them. He growled again and abruptly became aware of her mind trying to brush against his own....knowing him...loving him. 

This could not be. He could not be loved. But her presence insisted it.

He raised his hand---to draw her close or scare her away, he would never know or remember---but on the downfall of his hand, the shards of his consciousness that remembered this woman and their love, managed to pull the blow. He heard her scream a word, then all was darkness and silence.

***  
“Vincent!” Catherine screamed as his hand fell just inches from her body, as he slumped like a marionette with severed strings, as he fell gracelessly to the ground. She ran to him, feeling for a pulse and was shocked again at how hot he was, his temperature higher than it was even in those days in her apartment. It wasn't until she felt for the slow pulse at his neck that she realized there was no pulse at all. 

He was gone.

Catherine placed an ear against his chest. Nothing. “Vincent,” she muttered, “you can't do this, you can't let us end like this, you can't.”

But it was only in fairy tales that pleas resurrected the dead, and there was no response. “Father!” she yelled, beginning CPR and blessing Joe, who'd insisted they all take the class when it was offered at the office. 

Breaths, compressions, breaths, compressions....it seemed to go on and on but Catherine didn't know the passage of time as the ribs of that large chest creaked under her efforts, as she felt the blood from his lacerations coating her hands. Father came just as her own strength was beginning to fail and on his count, she stopped and he picked up the rhythm. Catherine held Vincent's hand, that large warm hand...the warm hand... _the warm hand...._

“Father?” Catherine gasped, wanting to hope but suddenly afraid to. 

There was a rattling breath, frighteningly harsh, but it _was_ a breath. Father sat back on his heels, breathing heavily. “He's alive,” Father said, “but we must get him out of this place.” Calling to Pascal, he dispatched both Mouse and Pascal with orders that sounded as complex as some military code, then Father turned to her. “I think we should both stay here until they come back.” His eyes scanned her face. “Did he hurt you?”

Catherine smiled, brushing her own tears away. “No, Father. He couldn't.” 

Incredibly, Father smiled. “Of course not. You're his heart.” 

She did cry then, just a little, barely holding back the torrent of emotion until the circumstances were better. “Thank you, Father,” she managed, pulling Vincent's head into her lap to stroke his hair, feeling the tangled, fever-damp mats in his mane. Only then did she remember that he was quite naked. 

Father picked up the lantern Mouse had left behind and turned it up higher. The dark shades of the cave evaporated into a dim orange light and Catherine gasped at the blood on the walls. His clothes were shredded in heaps along the cave floor. “Vincent...wouldn't want to be seen like this when we bring him home,” Father said, picking up the abandoned mound of Vincent's cloak---still intact, somehow—and placing it over him. 

It was true, Catherine knew; Vincent's layers of clothing weren't merely protection against the perpetual chill of the tunnels. But her heart hurt some more at how much he felt he had to hide, even among family and friends. She pushed that thought aside for later consideration; the immediate concern was to get Vincent out of this cave and back to his home. 

Father stood and headed for the cave entrance. “Mouse said he stashed some canteens of water nearby. I'll bring them back.”

Catherine nodded; it was stiflingly hot and now that the immediate danger had passed, she was uncomfortably aware of her sweater sticking to the thin fabric of her camisole and bra. She pulled her sweater off and folded it next to her trench-coat. There was a slight movement out of the corner of her eye: Vincent, shifting restlessly. She scrambled back to him and looked down at his face as she had done all those long days in her apartment. “I'm here,” she said, touching the fine soft fur on his cheekbones. “I won't leave.” 

His eyes opened just a bit and his mouth worked, trying and failing to speak. “Don't, my love,” Catherine said. “Rest. You're safe now. It's over.”

Vincent's eyes slid shut just as Father returned with the canteens. “Was he conscious?” Father asked, coming to sit by them. 

“I don't know if you'd call it that,” Catherine said, picking out one tangle in his mane and trying to unravel it. She laid one hand on Vincent's forehead, noting that his temperature seemed to be coming down a bit. “He awoke a bit and looked at me and tried to say something. But I'm not sure he was really aware.”

“Still,” Father replied, “that's a good sign. He didn't strike out at you, so perhaps this...illness is losing its hold on him.”

Catherine wasn't so sure about that. “Father. What was he like after...the last time?”

Father stared off into the distance. “He awoke briefly, to ask me if he was dead and when I told him he wasn't, he said he was hungry.” At Catherine's muffled chuckle, he laughed a bit too. “Well, he was, in that respect, a very normal teenage boy. Between he and Devin and Pascal and Winslow, it's a wonder they all didn't eat us out of house and home when they were teenagers.” He sobered then. “Physically, he recovered within a couple of weeks, regaining his strength quickly as he always does. His emotional recovery, though, took quite a long time. For several weeks, he was silent, withdrawn---embarrassed, I think, and haunted by what he'd been capable of doing, what he'd become in that madness. It was months before I heard him speak more than a few words to anyone.” Father looked over at her and the grey eyes softened. “I bear some of the blame for this latest illness. When he awakes, I hope he can forgive me.”

Catherine tilted her head, picking out another stubborn tangle. “What do you mean?”

“After his illness, when he finally spoke to me...Catherine, I was afraid.”

“Of him or for him?” she asked, blunt.

“Both,” Father confessed. “Lisa had been the source of such disaster for him and I didn't know...I didn't want him to ever hurt like that again. So I told him, as his friends began to pair off, that it was best if he not...get involved.”

Catherine bit her lip, feeling the hard words rumbling in her throat, but knowing they needed to be said. “And the message he received was that he was unworthy of love, of being loved.”

“I never meant him to think or feel that,” Father said. “Dear God, not that. Anyone who knows him knows there's no one who deserves love more.”  
Love. Yes, Vincent deserved all that and more---hadn’t she said so, tried to show him many times? All the words, lost down some unknowable abyss of the soul. Had he ever really believed her? She stared down at Vincent, at the blood drying on his forehead, thinking of all the rage, all the pain those wounds represented. He clearly had been banging his head against the rock, trying to…what? Destroy something? Block it out? Catherine thought then of other times blood had coated his hands---when he’d killed to protect her. Killed for her, perhaps, because he feared to express his love in any other way except through his protection.  
_And I didn’t see. Dear God, I didn’t see._ “I should have known what the killings were doing to him,” she said.

“How?” Father asked reasonably. “If there's one thing I've learned about my son, it's that he can be infernally stubborn when it suits him. When he doesn't want to talk, he won't.”

Catherine smiled, just a bit. “'Infernally stubborn'? I can't imagine where he would have gotten that.”

Father looked at her over the top of his glasses, finding a wry smile of his own. “I'm sure you can't.” He opened up his beaten-up medical bag and took out a clean, soft rag. “We might as well try and get some of the blood cleaned up so we can at least see where the wounds are.” 

“There's a lot of it,” she breathed. Her hands came to rest on his forehead; nearly hidden by his jagged bangs was the outline of one pale scar. Catherine knew where that scar had come from; the first of many she feared she'd given him, though the only one that was visible.

“Yes,” Father agreed. “Head wounds tend to bleed quite a lot, even when they're not that serious.” He gave her one of the rags he'd dampened with the water in canteen and took the other rag himself. Together, they cleaned Vincent's face and hair of much of the blood and dirt. Father brought the lantern closer to see better. “Hmmm. Looks like a few scalp lacerations which will need stitches, but unless he also has a concussion, I don't think they're severe. I am concerned about the chest injuries, though; if he's got broken ribs, we'll have to be very gentle in bringing him home.”

For the next half hour, Catherine watched Father do his examination in mounting concern. When he finally put his stethoscope away, she looked over at him. “How is he?”

Father rubbed his chin. “Dehydrated, but that's no great surprise. I suspect he has at least two cracked ribs and some deep bruising. But we can move him if we do so gently. After we get him home, we can address the other issues.”

Vincent stirred a bit, reaching out fretfully, and Catherine clasped his hand gently, noticing the deep bruises there and trying to be gentle. “I'm here. I'm not leaving.” He relaxed back into sleep. 

“He did that the last time,” Father murmured. “Kept reaching out for something or someone. I never knew what to do for him then.” His eyes met hers, warm and grey. “Dear Catherine. Just keep telling him that. It's what he needs to hear.” 

The sounds of Mouse's fractured chatter reached them and they smiled. Mouse, Pascal and two men Catherine hadn't personally met were outside the entrance of the cave.. One of them was at least as tall as Vincent, the other was shorter, but stockier. “I'm Elijah,” said the taller man, “and this is Paul. We'll bring him home, ma'am, don't worry.”

She watched as they carefully maneuvered Vincent's body onto the waiting stretcher which---like everything else in the tunnels---was patched and composed of parts far removed from their original purpose. It buckled for a second under Vincent's weight and he groaned but with Father's bracing on his ribs, he soon settled again into what Catherine hoped was a deep healing sleep. 

She picked up her sweater and overcoat from the cave floor. Clasping Vincent's hand again, she was startled to feel Father's hand on her arm. “Come, my dear. Let's bring him home.”

***

“He's lost so much weight,” Catherine said some time later, as they sat near Vincent's bed. Father had hooked up the IV and Mary had brought a meal for them both. Together, the three of them had cleaned and bandaged his wounds and with the help of Elijah and Paul, they had managed to get Vincent into a clean nightshirt. It was, Catherine thought grimly, probably the first time he'd been clear of the fever in days. Every rib on his chest had stood out in stark relief and once the golden fur had been cleaned of the blood and dirt, it was obvious how wasted he'd become. 

Mary nodded. “He hasn't been eating regularly...I'm surprised he didn't collapse long before this.” She rose then, and clasped Catherine's shoulder. “He'll be fine, Catherine. It's been a scary time for all of us, but things will turn around. You'll see.” She looked down at Catherine. “Should I make up the guest chamber for you?”  
Catherine shook her head. “No. I'll stay here with him.” 

Mary smiled, as if she'd expected as much. “Very well. I'll be in the nursery if you need anything.”

When she left, Father looked over at Catherine. “Are you sure you wish to stay? His sleep may be restless for some days, until he comes out of this...whatever this is.”

“I'm sure,” Catherine said. “You said it yourself: he needs me near. And I need to be there.” 

“Yes, of course,” Father replied. “And I'm sure he'll heal faster knowing you're near. I only meant that it might be a rough few nights until he wakes up.” He stood then. “I'm going to go to sleep myself. If you need anything, please call.”

“I will, Father,” she said. Vincent had shifted in his sleep slightly; there was just enough room for her to curl next to him on the bed. She pulled off her shoes and crawled in next to him and pulled the covers up. Taking one of Vincent's bandaged hands in her own, and being careful of his IV line, Catherine murmured, “I'm here. I'm not leaving.” Overcome by weariness, her eyes closed.


	2. Chapter Two- Coming Forth By Day

_It was dark, wherever he was. It wasn't the cave, but it wasn't the dimness of his chamber either. He was nearly weightless, the tether binding him to earth slender and frail...but at the same time, he didn't want to let go of the tether for fear of being lost. There were presences he felt, those that loved him and worried for him, but he had no energy to sort them out, no power to even open his eyes and respond._

_“You're not dead, you know,” a female voice said out of the stillness. Vincent turned his head and saw, to his shock, a great winged goddess. Ma'at, from the Egyptian legends he'd read as a child._

_“Ma'at?” he asked, stunned._

_Her large wings, the wings of a hawk, fluttered a bit as she came towards him. “I was wondering if you remembered your legends. Who am I the goddess of, Vincent?”  
“Justice and law,” he replied. She had been one of his favorites to read about, she and Selket and Sekhmet._

_Ma'at nodded. “Very good. Do you know why I'm here now?”_

_He remembered, with his heart in his throat, that Ma'at was also the decider of souls, the one who determined whether the souls of the dead would pass on into the afterlife. He recalled the story of the scale she carried, the scale that weighed whether a man's heart was heavier than a feather with the crimes he had committed while alive. Yet she had said he was not dead. “To...pass judgment?” he asked with a mouth gone suddenly dry._

_“On those who need it, yes. Should I stand in judgment of you?” She folded her arms, the feathers rustling._

_“I have killed, Ma'at. Too many times. I have lost myself in it too often. I no longer know if I am anything but a killer.”_

_Her great gold eyes gazed at him. “You defended the weak, the ones who could not defend themselves. You judge yourself far more harshly than I could.” She gestured with one feathered arm towards a section of the darkness which was growing lighter. “The war you fight inside yourself is what has so nearly destroyed you. Come.”_

_Unwillingly, he stood. “Here is where you leave,” Ma'at continued. “When your journey ends, we will meet again.”_

***  
Vincent awoke to find himself on a park bench in Central Park. In daylight. Instinctively, he tensed, reaching to pull the hood of his cloak up, but there was no hood, because he wasn’t wearing his cloak. Before this oddness could unsettle him, he noticed that the colors around him were even stranger---purple grass, brown trees, a dune yellow sky. “Ah, I see you’re awake, brother,” a voice said from off to his right, and he turned. 

It was the Other. Darker than he, and more formidable, but strangely calm. “Why are you here?” Vincent asked, forgetting for a moment all the dangers of being in the sunlight, or the sheer weirdness of waking up here, in a Central Park with purple grass. 

The Other hopped down from his perch on a boulder. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Vincent growled softly in the back of his throat, having no patience for riddles. “I was in the cave and…”

“And the lovely Catherine saved you,” the Other finished. “Good work that was, pulling the blow. You’d have killed her.”

“It would have been you who did it,” Vincent ground out, the growl riding just under his words. “I could never hurt her. I was trying to protect her from you.” 

The Other appeared utterly unfazed by this display of temper. “So you say. But you nearly died. Chasing me, of all things. Anyone ever tell you that chasing a part of yourself makes about as much sense as chasing our non-existent tail?” His dark counterpart came to sit next to him on the bench and Vincent was able to see that they were, indeed, nearly twins. The Other’s hair, which he’d taken for being dirty, was merely black, if uncombed. 

“So what do you want?” Vincent asked. 

“I’m not real,” his twin said, serious. “I’m a creation, a figment of what you fear. That’s why you’re here. And that’s why we’re going to take this trip together.”  
Vincent remembered the first time he’d sensed this apparition, back in the dark days after Lisa left, and the sick crawling nausea he’d felt each and every time he’d seen The Other or heard his taunting words. But now…he felt no fear of him, no despair. Nothing. “Am I dead?” Ma'at had said he was not, and yet....

His dark alter snorted. “Does this look like paradise to you?”

Vincent had to admit it did not. “Then let that be your answer,” the Other continued. “You’re not dead. Just in the..netherworld. Elysium, if you remember those legends Father read to us when we were ill.”

“I do remember,” Vincent said. “I’m just not sure why I’m here.”

“Because you need to be,” his dark alter said. He stood then and beckoned with his hand, clawed like Vincent’s own, though the fur was much darker. “Come.”

They walked for a time under the yellow sky until the Other stopped. “This is where you go ahead. I’ll be at the other side of the path when you’re done.”

Vincent turned, meaning to ask which path the Other meant---there were many, branching off in all directions---but when he looked beside him, the Other was gone. Walking slowly in the direction his dark twin had indicated, Vincent found that the path behind him was growing darker and dimmer until it was night. 

He stepped into a Central Park possessed of its usual colors…or, at least, what he thought of its normal colors: the cool shades of moonlight and night. Stars glittered pale overhead and there was a warm summer’s breeze blowing. A faint smell made his nose wrinkle in distaste; he hadn’t smelled the acrid grass smell since he’d been a teenager walking the park, trying to avoid stoned, raucous people.

Vincent looked down at himself---he, at least, was not changed, but he very much feared the world around him was. He looked closer at one group of students, dressed in bell bottom jeans and tie-dyed shirts and was shaken. This was not his world, his time, any longer. A shadow crept out from behind the trees, a young man dressed in bell bottom jeans and a t-shirt that had seen better days. “Remember me?” he asked.

From the shadow of his hood (when had he gotten his cloak back again? Vincent wondered) he looked sideways at the stranger. “Should I?” The voice was not at all familiar to him.

“You don’t remember me. But I…I remember you.” The young man turned his attention to a lone female jogger, who waved at the laughing students as she ambled by. “Do you remember her?”

Vincent’s breath froze in his throat. Did he…oh did he? How could he not? And all of a sudden, he remembered the young man, the jogger and the events to come. “It cannot be,” he muttered. 

“I want her,” the young man said, sullen in his rage. “But she won’t look twice at me. I have to make her see me.” 

In the space of a heartbeat, Vincent remembered how this scene had really occurred. Time snapped, and rebounded back...

***

_“I'm going to walk in the park,” Vincent had said, gathering up his cloak. It was stiflingly hot, even in the tunnels, but he needed the cloak's protection._

_Father turned to look at him. His hair and beard were dark; there was not a single strand of silver. “Vincent, I know I don't need to tell you the dangers, but must you? Especially with the attacks in the park; our helpers haven't been crossing through the park in weeks since these murders occurred.” He laid down the newspaper that he'd been reading; Vincent didn't need acute eyesight to see the headline that blared: FOURTH VICTIM FOUND IN CENTRAL PARK._

_“I'll be careful, Father,” Vincent said, 17 and impatient to escape the close, heated confines of the tunnels. The heatwave above was making everyone below tense and nervous with the unaccustomed heat and Vincent thought that if he didn't escape the collective irritability of his tunnel family for a few hours, he might lose his mind._

_“'Careful,' hmm?” Father said, scathingly. “And if the police are chasing this criminal and they see you, what then? Do you know what they'd do to you above?”_

_Vincent barely refrained from rolling his eyes, but it was a near thing. “I know, Father. But I have to get out of here for a little bit.”_

_“It's not much cooler above,” Father said, trying one last time._

_“I know,” Vincent said. “I won't be gone long.”_

_“See that you're not,” Father replied._

_Vincent had left the tunnels then, anxious for the cooler air and the calmer minds above. He had dodged the small groups of drunk and stoned students who were hanging out in the park, unafraid because they were young and they thought nothing bad could happen to them. He managed to hide in the shadows when a prostitute and her john came within a few feet of his hiding place and he was able to leave without their noticing._

_But he hadn't counted on the lone female jogger. She passed within inches of him near a heavily wooded trail and he'd had to stand stock still and hope the shadows obscured his face. “Who's there?” she asked uncertainly._

_Vincent held still, holding his breath. If she came any closer, she might be able to see him, cloaked or not. She stared into the shadows of the trees but didn't see anything and slowly, she picked up her pace again. Vincent breathed out in relief and emerged from the trees and resumed his walk. It was a few minutes later when he heard the voices ahead on the path. The female jogger and someone else, talking._

_“What are you doing out here, Jesse?” she asked._

_“Oh, you know me, I love a walk in the park,” her companion returned. He was a young man, dressed in bell bottoms---how do they walk in those? Vincent wondered---and a grubby t-shirt._

_“Sure you do,” the woman said. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you were stalking me.”_

_“Nah, not me,” the man replied and Vincent shivered at the hate emanating from him. How could she not sense it? Vincent wondered. “I just want a date, that's all,” the young man continued._

_“And I've told you 'No,' a thousand times,” the jogger said, finally becoming annoyed. “I'm engaged, you know.”_

_“He can't love you like I do.” The obsession and longing emanating from the other man was nauseating in its force and Vincent began to wish he'd stayed below._

_“Jesse, come on, let's just....don't touch me, you asshole!” The man grabbed her arm and the jogger tried to free herself, her panic beating against Vincent's mind like the flutter of bird's wings._

_It all happened so fast; later, Vincent would see the precise sequence of events over and over and not be able to think of what else he might have done different. The young man had grabbed the jogger roughly, intending to force her off the path into the woods. There was a struggle and the ripping of cloth and the silver light of a knife and Vincent had known he couldn't stand by and let the jogger be raped and killed. Instinct had taken over, overriding everything he'd ever known or been taught. All he'd known was that he'd had to protect._

_When it was over, when the man Jesse lay in slaughtered ribbons, bleeding his life out into the woods, the jogger had looked up in her terror and screamed, backing away from him. “You...you're a monster! Get away from me!”_

_Vincent had stood, hands and face and fur covered in blood and left her, as she'd asked._

***

“That was rough,” the Other said, appearing at his shoulder. Time had, apparently, reverted to its normal form, Vincent thought dully. “That was the first time we killed and she didn't appreciate it, did she?”

“I terrified her,” Vincent said, turning away from the scene, frozen like amber in front of him. 

“Sure,” the Other agreed equably. “But you saved her, too. I'm sure when she thought it over, she'd much rather have been alive to be terrified.” 

“Perhaps,” Vincent said. 

His dark twin came to stand in front of him. “You still don't get it, do you? We don't murder. Jesse killed four women and would have killed a fifth if you hadn't stopped him.”

“I know,” Vincent replied. “But Father's reaction---”

“Father's reaction was overdone,” the Other said. “He saw us when we came back and thought we'd been hurt. And when you told him what had happened, his next thought was that you'd risked the discovery of the tunnels by saving a topsider. So you were never able to talk to him about what you felt when you killed Jesse.”

“He didn't wish to know,” Vincent replied. 

“He didn't wish to know,” the Other said, “because that side of us has always frightened him. He's known we were capable of such things ever since Devin, since Lisa. But he doesn't want to see it.”

“I don't want to see it either,” Vincent growled. 

“It's who we are,” the Other insisted softly. “But it's not all of who we are. It's your choice, brother. You can accept it, or be destroyed by it.” He paused. “Hasn't there been enough destruction?”


	3. Chapter 3- Companion to Our Demons

Chapter Three: Companion to Our Demons

Catherine awoke to the feel of something tickling her nose. She brushed her nose, then realized it was Vincent's hair, clean-smelling and untangled for the first time in days, which had awakened her. In his sleep, he'd drawn her closer, so that her head was directly under his chin. It was still late, or early, she judged; the pipes were quiet and the sound of the overhead trains had ceased. 

She lay there for a time, not wanting to disturb Vincent's sleep. He had been restless in the night, muttering unintelligible sounds and growling low in his throat a couple of times, but he hadn't awakened. His left hand, with the IV line, rested on her thigh while his right hand held her left one in a firm clasp. Catherine studied those bandaged hands, the hands that had killed for her and for the tunnels so many times, the hands that grieved him so. She had seen them be gentle, soothing many a child's fears. Yet all Vincent saw was the killings, the mark of a beast, he would have said. How could she help him move beyond that?

She knew she'd have to go above in a few hours, to call and tell Joe that she needed a leave of absence. He wouldn't be pleased, but better him angry than him calling the police because she'd disappeared for days without explanation. If she still had a job when Vincent was healed...there were going to be changes. Starting with her job. It had become too dangerous, and if it was in her power, she would never see Vincent kill for her again. 

Catherine heard a soft, even tread and turned her head. It was Father. “I just came into check on him,” Father said softly. “I'm sorry to have disturbed your rest.”

“I was awake,” she said just as quietly. “I think he's doing fine, so far.”

“Hmmm,” Father said, taking Vincent's pulse and checking the IV. “So far, so good.”

She studied Father's face, noting how drawn he looked. “Are you sleeping at all?” Catherine asked. 

Father smiled. “I think I slept more during my residency, but don't worry.” He studied her carefully. “How are _you_ doing?”

“Thinking,” Catherine said. Father followed the line of her gaze to her hand clasped with Vincent's, and nodded. “Have you come to any conclusions?” Father asked.

“I'm going to ask for a transfer to the trial division, if I still have a job when this is all over,” Catherine replied. “I think...no, _I know_....Father, it's become too dangerous.”

“And you want this? Because you know what Vincent will say if you change your job assignment merely for him.”

“I do,” Catherine replied, smiling a bit at his likely reaction. “And if Joe can't or won't approve the transfer, then I'll quit and find work at a small non-profit. Anything. Just so he doesn't have to kill for me again.”

Father folded up his stethoscope, and replaced it in his bag. “I will tell you what I'm sure Vincent would. Follow your heart.” He looked down at their clasped hands then across at her again. “For myself, I would welcome anything that keeps the two of you from harm.” Readjusting the IV line, he pulled the covers up around them both. “Rest, now.” 

When he'd left, she nestled against Vincent once again and closed her eyes. The morning would come and there was time enough to make plans.

***  
Vincent was sitting on the park bench again. The Other sat next to him, eating an ice cream cone. It was such an incongruous image that Vincent almost laughed, except that the sight of his twin contentedly licking an ice cream cone was no weirder than anything else he'd experienced thus far. “What now?” Vincent asked. 

“It's chocolate. You want some?” the Other asked. 

Vincent shook his head. “No, thank you. Chocolate doesn't really agree with me.”

The Other grinned in a flash of white teeth in that dark face. “I know. But it tastes good while it lasts. Remember when Sam brought the ice cream down?”

Vincent nodded. He'd been 20 and they'd finally gotten reliable refrigeration thanks to Phillip's inspired jury-rigging. Sam had brought the ice cream down in celebration, and it had tasted so good after lugging the refrigerators---surplus from a helper's store---down to the main stockroom. . 

It had also been the last week Phillip was alive. Vincent frowned, remembering. “I know,” the Other said. “Phillip was a good man. But his death wasn't your fault.”

“Wasn't it?” Vincent asked. “If I'd been just a bit sooner...”

The ice cream cone had disappeared; the Other sat up and looked him straight in the eye. “Would have, should have, could have. Brother, the past is past. You did what you could, when you could. Let it go.” 

Vincent felt the touch of a clawed hand on his shoulder. “I cannot,” he said. “I was their protector. I should have been there.”

The Other sighed. “Very well. Then we'll go down this path again.”

***

_They'd just finished hooking up the refrigerators to Phillip's jury-rigged electrical system when the alarm rang out on the pipes: intruders. “Probably just some drunk teenagers again,” Phillip said, straightening from his wiring. Above, he'd been an electrician until his continual battle with the bottle had left him homeless, sick and alone, in what turned out to be the tunnel's main entrance. Now, almost eight years after Vincent and Devin had found him, he was a trusted member of the community._

_Vincent grunted in agreement, carefully maneuvering the refrigerators into place. “I should go,” Vincent said. “I have sentry duty tonight anyways.”_

_“After hours of hauling these lugs? Man, that's brutal. How do you do that?”_

_Vincent wiped his hands on a relatively clean bit of rag. “Because I must,” he replied, uncomfortable with any suggestion that he might be more different or unusual than he already knew himself to be._

_“Nah, man, I mean, when do you sleep?”_

_“Tomorrow,” Vincent said, smiling at Phillip._

_He'd grabbed his cloak and walked to where the intruders were----an access tunnel preferred by some of their older helpers because of its close proximity to the inhabited tunnels. Along the way, he met the sentry who'd sent the alarm. “How many are there?” Vincent asked James._

_James shrugged. “Four or five. Young guys. I heard them moving about and there might be more now.”_

_Vincent nodded. The drunks weren't usually a problem---one good roar and they'd go running and if they didn't, there were other ways of scaring them off. But if they were sober and exploring, that was a whole other kind of risk, and one they all feared. “I'll go check on them,” Vincent replied, pulling the hood of his cloak up._

_“Be careful,” James said._

_“I will,” Vincent said, stepping into the shadows. It was a short walk to the corridor where the intruders had been sighted. He crouched behind an outcropping of darker rock and watched them. Five, six men, hefting large bundles down from the street above. Two men stood guard, guns slung over their chests, watching with wary eyes.  
He growled low in the back of his throat. Drug dealers. Storing their poison in his home, near the places where children lived and slept every day. _

_***  
“Drug smugglers? Are you sure?” Father asked in the council meeting that night. _

_Vincent nodded. The council meeting had gone on for an hour already and they were still no closer to reaching a decision than they were when he and James had returned. The rolling tide of emotion---fear, anger, defiance---beat against him and added to the headache he felt in any large, agitated gathering. Father's voice cut through the confusion. “We need a plan. Does anyone have any suggestions?”_

_“We could try and scare them off,” Vincent said, resisting the urge to rub the bridge of his nose where the headache gnawed fiercely. If he could just go somewhere quiet..._

_“And if that doesn't work, what then?” Winslow demanded. “If they're storing drugs down here, it won't be long before they find more entrances. Even if we block the entrance they used, that doesn't mean they won't find others the longer they're down there.”_

_“So what do you suggest?” Father asked._

_“Perhaps an anonymous tip to the police,” James said. “Then we block or reroute the other entrances.”_

_“It's located near a main artery,” Father replied, gesturing to the map that was laid on the table before him. “We could change the entrances but that would be difficult on the helpers who live near there...and there's no guarantee that the police wouldn't go searching for other tunnels they might have used. No, we cannot involve the world above in this, even though they bring their poison to our home.”_

_Father looked over at Vincent. “Take a couple of men with you. Try to scare them off.”_

_Vincent met Phillip’s eyes across the chamber, knowing full well what would happen if they couldn’t scare the drug dealers off. The tunnels were limited in their ability to defend themselves; the sentries traditionally carried no weapons, and if there was further trouble, there would almost certainly be bloodshed. And Vincent knew which role his tunnel family expected him to assume in such times: the protector. “Which is a crock,” Phillip had said on more than one occasion, and loudly too, until Lark—Phillip's wife of three years---shushed him. “What, no one else can defend themselves around here?”_

_It wasn’t the first time Vincent had thought such a thing, but it was the first time he’d heard it said by anyone else. “That William,” Phillip said, “he’s ex-Army. What, he can’t fire a gun to defend his home? What good are the sentries if Father won’t let them carry arms?”_

_“He doesn’t want the violence above to follow us down here,” Vincent repeated, as if by rote. It was a philosophical argument he’d heard since childhood and at times, it was wearying._

_Phillip had scoffed at that notion too. “You all gave me a place when I had no one. My wife lives here now. Give me a pitchfork or a kitchen knife, and I’ll defend this place. Seems to me everyone else should be willing to do the same.” Phillip’s dark eyes had looked into Vincent’s own; they were almost of a height, he and Phillip. “It shouldn’t always be you, man. You’re just a kid.”_

_Vincent had chuckled at that---no one had referred to Vincent as a kid since he’d topped a rangy six feet at 16---and the conversation turned to other things. But he remembered the conversation now as the wrangling and the arguments and the fear ricocheted around the rock walls. Phillip's arm was wrapped around his wife's waist and there was a careful, subtle nod. Whatever Vincent was asked to face, Phillip would stand with him._

_***_

_In the end, three of them went that first night: Vincent, Phillip, and Winslow. “I don't like this much,” Winslow said as they walked to where the criminals had made their camp. “My old man told me stories of the drug dealers up top. You all think they're going to be scared by some meowing?”_

_Vincent chuckled a bit. Only Devin and Winslow could get away with that kind of teasing. “I do not,” he said with some dignity, “meow.”_

_“Sure, whatever you call it,” Winslow replied, punching Vincent lightly in the arm. “But still. You're gonna growl, or whatever, at them and they'll never come back? Who does Father think he's fooling?”_

_“Winslow,” Phillip said, “Father doesn't want to provoke an all-out war. I don't blame him. These guys don't fool around, and we're not armed like we should be.”_

_Winslow breathed out once. “My old man and Father had that argument for years about arming the sentries. I get his point. Doesn't mean I like it.” He rubbed his hands together. “So, what's the plan?”_

_Vincent shrugged. “The plan is, we go there, make a lot of noise. Coming at them from all directions, it might scare them off.” He spread his hands at Winslow's dark look. “Do you have a better idea?”_

_“Calling the cops wasn't a bad one,” Winslow said. “But since this is what we got, we'll go with it. And hope to hell it works.”_

_They crouched lower, hugging the shadows as they came closer to the drug smugglers. Five of the smugglers were crouched around a fire, passing bottles of beer around. Vincent reached up and made a light tapping noise on the pipes; the signal for Pascal's part to begin. All at once, a loud random clanking burst from the pipes over the smuggler's heads._

_“Hey, what the hell was that?” one smuggler asked, eyes darting around._

_Phillip reached back and grabbed the old pots that James had stashed behind a rock outcropping the night before; handing two of them to Winslow, they began banging loudly on them, in counterpoint to the noise of the pipes._

_“Man, this place is creepy,” another smuggler said, covering his ears as the noise grew louder and louder, relentless, the echoes chasing each other in small space._

_Then it was Vincent's turn. In safe, normal times, it was difficult for him to roar, but these men threatened his home and his family and all the fierce protective energy the Other could muster rose within him, primal and defiant. The roar started somewhere in the middle of his chest and the sound ricocheted over the sound of the banging pots and the clanking of the pipes. He stepped forward, a tall hooded figure, dark in the shadows cast by the smugglers' fire._

_The roaring continued, and at the advance of the hooded figure, the nerve of the smugglers broke. They ran for the entrance ladder above, leaving their drugs behind. Vincent retreated, the roaring slowly lessening until it was nothing but a threatening growl then finally, harsh breathing. He slumped against the wall, trying to reign in the Other, to control the instinct to chase the intruders from his home and make sure they never returned. Winslow banged out the all-clear on the pipes and the noise above them ceased._

_Phillip threw down his pots and touched Vincent's shoulder. Vincent recoiled, a warning snarl emerging despite his best attempts. Phillip jumped back a little in shock and Winslow grabbed his arm. “Leave him be,” Winslow said. “He'll be all right in a moment or two.”_

_“He will?” Vincent heard Phillip ask, as if from a great distance. The roar in his ears began to recede._

_“He will,” Winslow replied. “That's what most don't get---this ain't easy for him.”_

_Vincent took one breath, then two and the haze of protective rage faded. “I'm sorry, Phillip.”_

_Phillip smiled. “No problem, man. Looks like they've scattered. Let's get rid of these drugs and go home.”_

***

The Other smiled at his twin. “I enjoyed that, you know. Scaring them off. It felt good.”

Vincent nodded. It had felt good. But he'd been scared of it too, frightened that the protective rage would flare out and harm the others. “See, that's where you keep messing up,” his twin said. “We never hurt or scared anyone that didn't have it coming.”

Vincent raised his eyebrows. “What about Devin? Lisa?”

The Other leaned back against the park bench and folded his arms. “Devin had it coming. You'll remember he hit us first.”

“I shouldn't have hurt him,” Vincent said. “He still has the scars.”

“It was a fight between brothers,” the Other said. “And he was spoiling for a fight. Haven't you and I fought often enough?”

Vincent felt the echo of his twin's sardonic grin cross his face. “Didn't you tell me you weren't real?”

The Other grinned back. “I'm not. But your mind likes to think I am, so...until you get over the idea that I'm some dark, dangerous part of you that can't ever be allowed to surface, here I am.” 

Vincent stared at his twin. “You were dangerous, with Lisa. I hurt her.”

“So you did. But hurting her was an accident. We didn't mean to hurt her. She toyed with us, teasing. Surely you remember that.”  
Vincent nodded. “But it doesn't excuse what I did.”

“What you did, was to hold too tightly to a silly, immature girl who was startled when her game went too far. No, you shouldn't have hurt her, but there's plenty enough blame to go around. Forgive yourself, brother. Just because you made one mistake---two, if you insist on counting Devin---doesn't make you a monster.” 

Vincent leaned back and studied his twin, the blue eyes so startling in those dark features. “You were very different when I became ill the last time. Why?”

“I frightened you, didn't I?” the Other said. “Surely you can figure out why. You desired Lisa, and that scared you. Father told you, had always told you, how different you were, so you couldn't talk to him. When you hurt her, even accidentally, it was confirmation of everything you feared---that you really were some monster, that you weren't fit to love anyone. And your guilt nearly destroyed you.” He paused. “What you feared, Brother, was yourself. What you battled, in your rages and fevers and deliriums, was only and always...yourself.”


	4. Chapter Four- All My Sins Remembered

Chapter Four: All My Sins Remembered 

Catherine returned above shortly after dawn. She hated the thought of leaving Vincent for any amount of time, but she had to talk to Joe and arrange for a leave of absence and pack some clothes and toiletries for what she suspected would be an extended stay below, and neither of those things could be accomplished by one of the tunnel messengers. Before she left, she kissed Vincent softly on his mouth and whispered into his ear, “I'll be back soon. I love you.” Only his breath had stirred, moving slightly faster, but he had settled back into sleep. 

In her apartment, with its shattered balcony doors--- _must remember to get that fixed,_ Catherine thought to herself, then almost at the same instant dismissed the damage as unimportant---she showered and changed and thought, long and hard, about what she could or would tell Joe. He knew she was involved with someone; it was part and parcel of the things he knew about her but would never ask directly about. But Vincent was, in so many ways, beyond explaining. _Keep to the facts,_ she reminded herself. The man she loved was sick, and he needed her. All else was details, details she could not, must not share.

But when Catherine saw Joe that morning, she was not prepared for his reaction. “Good God, Cathy, you look like hell,” Joe said, ushering her to a seat in his office and pressing a glass of water into her hand. “What's wrong? When was the last time you slept?”

“This morning, I think.” She took a drink of water. “Joe, I need to ask you something. I need a leave of absence.”

“It's not the flu like you told Rita, is it?” he asked, and Catherine was reminded of why he was such a good prosecutor. Not much ever escaped him.

“No,” she replied, not liking to admit she'd lied to Rita but Vincent's welfare was, as always, paramount. “The man I love is sick, and he needs me. And I can't keep splitting my life---I have to be with him now.”

“How long do you need, Cathy?” Joe asked. 

“A month, maybe more,” Catherine replied, not at all sure even that time would be enough. 

“Cathy, look, I'm not gonna lie to you---we're going to have to rearrange all of the assignments for the cases you were working on, but it's okay, we'll work through it. Escobar needs the practice anyway.” He studied her face. “He must be something special, am I right?”

She'd managed to hold her emotions together throughout all the awful days before, and the nights and the hours when she'd had to be strong for Vincent, and even for Father, but this last bit of kindness undid her completely. She started crying and it was like a dam had burst---all the fear, all the worry, all the grief and horror of the last few days and weeks crowded out of her in a flood. “Hey, hey, easy now,” Joe said, his arms around her. “It's going to be all right. It's been rough, hasn't it?”

She blew her nose, nodded. “Sorry about that,” Catherine said, feeling suddenly exposed, afraid she'd revealed too much. 

“Hey, Radcliffe, no one can be strong forever. Take the time you need. The work will still be here. You do what you have to do.” He stepped back, released her. “You okay?”

“No, but I will be,” Catherine replied, smiling. And in a strange way, she felt it; life had changed, her priorities had shifted and become more focused but the way before them was starting to become clear. 

***

Vincent opened his eyes to the true dark of a tunnel night. His dark alter sat cross-legged on Vincent's own bed. “Ah,” the Other said, “I wondered when we'd get back here.”

“Why are we here?” Vincent asked. There was somewhat less clutter, but in all other respects, this chamber was very much his own. His eye fell on the chess game, half-completed, that sat on the table. The chess set was different than the one he used now; Phillip had carved the first one and after he died, Vincent hadn't been able to look at it. Perhaps Lark had taken it when she returned above. He couldn't remember.

“Because you insist on blaming yourself for things which were never in your control,” his twin replied, following his gaze to the chess set. 

“She blamed me,” Vincent said, seeing the aftermath of the funeral as though it had happened yesterday.

“She did,” the Other agreed. “She was wrong. Do you see that now?”

He tore his gaze from the chess set to the Other. “How can I? Phillip died because I was too late to save him.”

The Other rolled his eyes. “When will you learn that not everything in the universe is under your control? Phillip died because he'd been shot five times. You couldn't help him because you were shot twice. You nearly died---ask Father some time. He'll tell you.”

“But I should have---”

“What? Kept him from being shot? Kept Phillip from helping you? Phillip saw you as the son he never had. He wouldn't have stayed behind while you risked danger for his home. It could not have gone otherwise, Brother. Let me show you.”

And at his words, the world dissolved again. 

***

_They'd disposed of the drugs, large parcels of them, down the Abyss, then returned home. For a time, things were quiet and the tunnel routine slowly began to return to normal. Vincent and Father had been planning the closure and reroute of the tunnel entrance the smugglers had used when James failed to show up for sentry duty._

_“That's not like him,” Father said, concerned, and indeed it wasn't._

_“Where was he last seen?” he asked Ethan, who was relaying the message from Pascal._

_“Pascal heard from him about an hour ago, near that tunnel we had marked for closure,” Ethan replied._

_“He was measuring it for the supplies we'd need to rerout it,” Father said. “Vincent, will you check on him?”_

_Vincent nodded. “Don’t go alone,” Father continued. “Take someone else with you.” His eyes met Vincent’s and Vincent understood the older man’s concern. The incident with the smugglers had been only a few days earlier and it was possible that whatever had befallen James was related. The predator’s instinct within him shifted, rising to the surface. That they might return here, to his home…unthinkable. And not to be allowed. He gathered his cloak and went to see if Phillip would be available to aid in the search._

_Vincent heard Phillip, long before he saw him, deep in conversation with Lark. Vincent halted just down the hall from their chamber, not wishing to intrude or overhear but very much afraid he could not avoid it. To his surprise, they were discussing him. “And he could have gotten you killed, Phillip,” Lark was saying. “Why did you have to go with him on that fool stunt? And now James is missing and….”_

_“Lark, this is our home. What do you want me to do?”_

_There was the rustle of cloth; Lark embracing her husband, Vincent realized, backing away further so as not to hear further. He and Lark did not really get along; she’d come below shortly before the incident with Lisa and Vincent knew that her distrust of him was rooted in her fear of what she’d seen him become during that dark time. She was cordial enough, but her fear of him rode every word she spoke and every glance she shared._

_Phillip met him at the end of the corridor. “Lark, she worries,” he said by way of explanation._

_“I didn’t hear anything,” Vincent said. It was a lie and surely Phillip knew it as such, but if he did, he made no comment._

_“This thing with James,” Phillip said. “It doesn’t sound good. Does it?”_

_Vincent shook his head. “No. It’s unlike James to fail to appear for sentry duty, and then to not respond to Pascal’s messages on the pipes. It is…troubling.”_

_They met up with Davy and Alex at the juncture of another corridor; they’d been checking some of the more uninhabited areas of the tunnels where James might possibly have fallen or become injured. “No sign of him,” Davy said, frowning. “Alex and I, we called for him but didn’t hear a thing.”_

_“I think we should start where James was seen last,” Vincent said._

_Alex nodded. “Davy and I will keep searching; it's just possible he went for a walk and got hurt somehow.”_

_The group separated, and Phillip and Vincent made their way back to the tunnel where they'd rousted the drug smugglers only a few days before. It was there that they found James, face down in the dirt, dead of a gunshot wound to his head. Phillip gently turned the body over as he looked up at Vincent. “They came back,” Phillip said, agonized._

_Vincent knelt beside the body of James and the roar that escaped him was full of grief and sorrow._

_And rage._

_***_

_The day after James' funeral, Father held a council session. It was a smaller meeting than usual; just Father, Winslow, Pascal, Vincent, and Phillip were present. “We need a plan,” Father said, clearly in shock. James had a been a young man, and well-liked; his death by violence was something they all thought they had left behind when they came below._

_Winslow, leaning up against the bannister, spoke. “I still think the idea of calling the police wasn't a bad plan.”_

_“It's gone too far for that,” Phillip said. “Vincent found evidence that they've been into the other chambers branching off from that tunnel. Calling the cops will only make them find us quicker.”_

_“How far have they gone, Vincent?” Father asked._

_Vincent pointed at the map unrolled on Father's desk. “I found tracks here, here, and here.”_

_“And you're certain it's from them?”_

_“Yes,” Vincent nodded but didn't elaborate. He didn't really want to describe just how he knew, that the smell of drugs and blood and gunpowder had hung thickly in the air long after James' killers had left. It was something else that marked him as different and with the Other beating at his mental barriers, demanding to be set free to wreak his vengeance upon the smugglers, he hardly needed the reminder. “I believe they were looking for their drugs when James stumbled upon them and...”_

_“I see,” Father said. “And the drugs are...disposed of?”_

_“Down the Abyss, after we chased them off,” Phillip said, his mouth twisting bitterly. “We thought we were so smart, getting rid of it.”_

_“You couldn't very well leave them there,” Father said. “James' death was a tragic accident, but the fault lies only with those who killed him.” He paused, looking down at his folded hands. “My fear is that whoever those drugs belong to will come looking for them.”_

_Winslow nodded. “Ain't much doubt about that. It wasn't just a couple of joints we threw down the Abyss.”_

_Father sighed, suddenly looking old and haggard. “I see no other course for us but that we should arm the sentries. Winslow and Phillip, will you see to it?” Father asked._

_Phillip and Winslow exchanged shocked glances. Father, wanting to arm the sentries, after twenty odd years of insisting they must never be? “This is our home,” Father said, clearly understanding their reaction. “I very much hope that such weapons need never be used...but at the same time, I can't leave us defenseless.”_

_“No, you can't,” Vincent said, the instincts of a predator denied its rightful prey running hot and violent within him._

_“Pascal, we need to make a community announcement,” Father continued. “The women and children will have to stay near the home chambers at all times while this threat remains.”_

_Phillip looked at Father. “You're afraid of hostages.”_

_Father nodded. “Very much so. Who knows what such desperate men might do, in search of their drugs? We've already seen what they're capable of.”_

_“Anything else?” Pascal asked, making notes on a bit of scrap paper._

_“The sentries will travel in pairs only. Who's on the roster for tonight?”_

_“I am, Father, as is Ethan,” Vincent replied._

_“Ethan was James' best friend,” Father replied. “Let's give Ethan some time...Phillip and Winslow, are you available tonight?”_

_Winslow nodded. “And I don't think my dance card is full,” Phillip said, smiling. “Sure, I'll switch sentry duty with Ethan.”_

_***_

_Sentry duty that night started out as it usually did; checking the entrances and the main tunnel arteries looking for water leakage or cracks that might need to be fixed, making sure the torches in the hub were lit, and keeping an eye out for signs of incursion from the world above. Phillip carried a torch and a hasty copy of one of Father's maps to mark where they'd been and what they'd seen, if anything._

_“Do you...sense anything?” Phillip asked._

_Vincent looked at him in some surprise. “Oh, come on” Phillip said. “Maybe everyone else here doesn't notice—or doesn't want to---but I know how good your senses are. So...do you hear anything or smell anything?”_

_“Just dust,” Vincent said, and sneezed. “A whole lot of dust.”_

_Phillip chuckled and they kept walking, making notations on the map as they went. They were exiting one pathway, a little used access tunnel slated for closure when the main entrances were rerouted, when a prickling sensation began to tug at Vincent's nerves. The feeling, the impression that they were not alone. He touched at Phillip's arm, gesturing into the shadows._

_“What is it?” Phillip asked._

_“Listen. Do you hear it?” Vincent said. Phillip shook his head. “Two or three people, in tennis shoes, carrying...carrying something,” Vincent whispered.  
“Where are they?” Phillip asked._

_“The fourth junction to our left,” Vincent replied._

_“But that's---”_

_“---the level above Eileen's candle workshop. Yes.” Vincent's fist clenched against the rocky walls, trying to hold the Other at bay. Let loose, he would kill the smugglers one and all to defend this place and these people...but Vincent dare not assume he could control the beast then. The boiling rage was too strong and he growled low in his throat._

_Phillip glanced at him, startled. “You okay?”_

_Vincent nodded, not trusting his ability to speak just then. “We need to get an exact count for Father,” Phillip said. “Are you...can you....?”_

_“Yes,” Vincent said, shoving back the fury and finding his words. “You're right. Father will need to know what we're dealing with.”_

_They found out, soon enough. The dull scrape of metal—gun metal---against stone was all the warning Vincent received when one of the smugglers (a scout, he realized sometime later,) began firing at the two strangers. Vincent lurched forward to shove Phillip out of the way but he was just out of arm's reach, and was cut down almost instantly. Phillip fell forward, bleeding into the sand._

_The rage burst forward, the awful, heated fury that admitted no injury, that could not be bargained with. Vincent only remembered what happened next in a series of disjointed images: the blood of one smuggler spraying his face as an artery was laid bare, the guts of another as he was torn to bits, the dying screams of a third.  
When it was over, Vincent stood in a pile of bodies and wondered why it was so hard to breathe all of a sudden. The agony in his chest was a terrible, spreading weight, matched only by the pain in his heart as he stared at Phillip's dead body. _

_Alerted by the sounds of gunfire, Winslow arrived just in time to catch Vincent as his knees buckled._

_***_

_Weak from infection and blood loss, Vincent could not attend Phillip's funeral, but he mourned Phillip just the same. “Lark wants to see you,” Father said after the funeral. “As your physician, I'm not sure I'd allow it. You're running a fever and one of those bullets I took out of you nicked an artery. It's only due to Winslow, luck and these sutures that you're still alive at all.” He gave Vincent an injection from their precious store of antibiotics._

_“She blames me,” Vincent said. He needed no special senses to know this; Lark's shrieking that he'd killed her husband had echoed off the rock walls as soon as she'd been told of Phillip's death._

_“She does,” Father said, touching the side of his face in a reassuring gesture Vincent remembered from his childhood. “You must know she's wrong.”_

_“Do I?” Vincent asked, feeling the heat of the fever prickle at the corners of his eyes. “Phillip is dead because he went first into that cavern. If it had been me---”_

_“If it had been you, you would be dead. You were ambushed, Vincent. And there's no way you could have known.”_

_Father stood then. “There's something you should know. Lark has announced that she's returning above. She says there's nothing for her here now that Phillip is gone.”_

_Vincent closed his eyes. “She must not abandon her home because of me.”_

_“Vincent,” Father said, “she's angry. And in pain. Perhaps Lark will return above; if she wishes to, that's her right. But if she does, it's not because of anything you did.” He replaced the bottle of antibiotic in the small refrigerator— one of the ones, Vincent realized with a pang---that Phillip had installed only a few days earlier. “I want you to rest; I'm going to go and talk to Lark.”_

_Vincent didn't mean to close his eyes, but close them he had, for he opened his eyes to see Lark standing just outside the entrance to his chamber. “May I come in?” she asked._

_He tried to sit up, but the pain in his chest and Father's dire warnings about reopening the sutures stilled his action. “Please,” he said, gesturing to the empty chair at the end table._

_“I just realized---all the years I've lived here, I've never come to your chamber.” Lark sat down, and Vincent was reminded of how little they knew each other. She had lived here for nearly six years, but they were still strangers to each other. Her thick braid fell over her shoulder as she settled in the chair and she impatiently pushed it back._

_“Why did you come?” Vincent asked, curious._

_“I had this idea that I'd come here and blame you for Phillip's death and yell and scream and that would make me feel better. But he's just as dead.” Her cold brown eyes stared into his own. “Not that I don't blame you. I do. He had no business going out there on sentry duty; I begged him not to go, but he wouldn't listen, said he couldn't send you out there alone. Well, if he had, you'd be dead and he'd be alive. And I'd have preferred it that way. He was...everything to me. He was my life. I don't suppose you understand that.”_

_“No,” Vincent replied. “I've never known that. I doubt I ever will.”_

_Lark folded her arms. “I doubt you will either. It's not something that's common.” She stood. “I don't know why I came, really. But I can't, _I won't,_ stay here. Every time I see you, I'll think that Phillip should still be alive and you should be dead in his place, and that's no way to live.”_

_“I loved him too,” Vincent said, the waves of her pain and grief enclosing him in a storm so loud he could barely hear himself think. “Not like you did, of course, but he was my friend and he...”_

_She held up a hand. “Please. I don't want to hear it. Not from you.” Lark turned her back on him and left his chamber._

***  
Vincent opened his eyes, not surprised to find his face was wet. “She left the following morning.”

“I know,” the Other said. “Again, that wasn't your fault. Father had the right of it---Lark could have stayed below and healed among her friends and family but she chose to leave. It was her choice.”

“But I was responsible for getting Phillip killed,” Vincent said. The grief had lodged in his heart so long he no longer knew what it was like to live without it. 

His dark alter sighed. “One of these days, I'll have to tell Father that 'infernally stubborn' doesn't begin to cover it. Look, Brother, what were we doing there? What was Phillip doing there?”

“We were trying to protect the tunnels,” Vincent replied. “Phillip volunteered to go with me that night.”

“Phillip was a grown man. He knew what he was facing---you both did. He chose to go with you because your safety, and the safety of the tunnels, was worth it to him.”

Vincent nodded. Phillip had been like that; fierce and loyal in defense of his friends and family. For the first time in years, Vincent felt that stone of grief begin to dissolve, just a little. He looked down at his hands and saw the blood that had covered them, stiffening the fur and clotting under his nails. “What about the others? The smugglers I killed?”

“Again, we've never hurt those that didn't have it coming,” the Other said. “You can't tell me you regret killing them.”

“No,” Vincent said slowly. In the face of the threat the smugglers had represented, there had been no question about the rightness of his actions, only regret that James and Phillip had been killed before he could act. “But what I feared then, and now, is the rage. I have no control over it.”

“Really?” his twin said. “You have no control over me? Then why aren't you snarling when Father angers you? Why aren't you lashing out when Catherine has to cancel on us because she has an early court appearance the next morning? You truly have no control over your emotions?”

“That's different,” Vincent began, but his twin cut him off.

“How is it different? Don't you see, Vincent? Your rage, our rage, is a protective rage. It only emerges when those we care for are threatened. The tunnels. Catherine.”

At the sound of her name, Vincent's head jerked up. _She must be terrified,_ he thought, remembering the shards of those last few minutes in the cave. How she could still stand to look at him after all the men he'd killed was a source of utter shock.

“She is our mate. Of course we have killed for her, to protect her,” the Other said. 

Vincent stared at his twin. He'd never dared to consciously think of Catherine in those terms, so convinced had he been that she must be free to choose a life without him. But the Other, it seemed, knew. Had always known. _As did I,_ Vincent thought. _If I survive this journey, I must tell her._


	5. Chapter Five- Like Silent Raindrops Fell

Chapter Five: Like Silent Raindrops Fell

When Catherine returned to the tunnels, she found Father by Vincent's bedside, reading to him. “Ah, Catherine,” Father said, looking up as she entered. “How was your trip Above? Were you able to arrange things with your boss?”

She nodded. “I've gotten a leave of absence for a month---and if Vincent needs me longer than that, I'll do what I have to do so I can stay with him. How's he doing?”

“Well enough, from what I can tell,” Father replied, closing the book---Great Expectations, she noticed with a smile---and placing it on the table. “He hasn't awakened yet, but I'm not really surprised; that's what the pattern was of this illness the last time.”

Catherine studied Father's face. The lines of worry and care were there, in the tight lines around his mouth. “But you seem concerned. Why?”

“Sometimes I feel so useless,” Father said. “I'm his doctor. I should know how to treat him, if his condition worsens. But I don't. For thirty-odd years, Peter and I have been making it up as we go and we've been lucky that Vincent hasn't been injured or killed by our ignorance. But....” He took a deep breath. “I forced myself to look at the records those two.... scientists”---he fairly spat the word--- “made when they held Vincent captive, just to see if they'd learned more than I had. They hadn't. So we're back at square one, hoping that he can heal himself.” He shrugged, looking older in that instant than Catherine had ever seen him. “I don't always know what to do for him, what to do to heal him.”

She came to sit next to him and took his hand, that worn physician's hand, briefly. “Father, I don't know what to say. You always seemed so self-confident.”

Father smiled. “I've tried to know what was right for him, in many things. And too often, that crossed into trying to make decisions for him that were purely his to make. I'm sorry, Catherine, that I didn't trust Vincent more when it came to you.”

She thought of Margaret, of Lisa. “That's over now, Father. It has been, for a long time. But...thank you, anyway.”

Father smiled at her, then stood. “I need to get some sleep. Will you be all right with him for a few hours?”

“Yes, of course. Sleep well.” Once Father had left, she turned to Vincent. “I'm back, Vincent. I went above and took care of some things, but I'm not going to have to leave you again.” Catherine took in how worn he looked, the shadows under his eyes, the bandages across his ribcage and his hands, the stitches on his scalp visible through the dark gold of his hair. “No matter what happened, I'm here. I love you, and I'm not leaving.”

***

_I'm....not....leaving...._

The words fell on Vincent's ears as if through a long tunnel, but his heart heard them, balm to all the grief and pain of the last few weeks. She was there, close to him, loving him still, wherever he was. The cave? He thought not. Perhaps his chamber.

“She loves us,” the Other said out of the darkness. 

“She does,” Vincent said, feeling the warmth through their bond. “I don't know how, but she does.”

His twin sat next to him on a park bench---they were in Central Park again, Vincent realized. “Isn't it enough that she does love you?” the Other asked. “Why must you always question what is?”

“Because I don't understand it,” Vincent said to this shadow self. “I've killed many times. Killed for her, true, but I've still killed. And she's seen what I've become in the rages. Why...how...can she love me?”

“She loves us. All of us. All of what we are and are not,” the Other said. “Why can't you accept that?” 

Vincent stared at his other self, darker than he but still, recognizably, him. A part of him, a part that Catherine had found she could love. Even though she had seen...she had seen...

“Yes, she did see that,” his twin said. “Do you remember that she took our hand?”

“Yes,” Vincent replied, the shock of that living in his memory along with all his other memories of Catherine. 

“What does that tell you, Brother? She knows who we are. She has always known. And maybe you should trust her more.”

Vincent stared off into the dark of a Central Park night. “Trusting Catherine was never the issue. It's myself I don't trust.”

***  
 _It was just before Samhain, Vincent recalled, when he thought about that night. He'd gone to see Catherine, ignoring Father's cautions, ignoring even his own good sense that seeing her again would only bring him pain. When he'd seen first seen Catherine on her balcony, he'd known, in a single heart-stopping moment, that the connection between them would not, could not be severed. And had let himself be drawn beside her, to finish Great Expectations  amid the night and the stars. _

_Just a few days after that visit, he and Father had been playing chess when her fear and anger had ricocheted through him in an torrent he could not ignore. Every instinct had fired and disregarding Father's gasp of concern, he'd grabbed his cloak and fled the tunnels, intuition, and feeling sparking towards her in a rush of flame unlike anything he'd ever felt before._

_Vincent remembered crashing through the basement of the old brownstone and destroying the men who had threatened her life, the same men (he was to learn later) who had already murdered the witness Catherine had been trying to protect. The killing instinct, the protective rage was starting to fade when he met Catherine's eyes and saw the shock there. Vincent thought it would be the end of them the minute she knew him for the beast he was, and felt his heart seize in shame and horror. Instead of the recoil he'd expected and felt he deserved, Catherine took his sticky, blood-stained hands and tugged on them. “We can't stay here.”_

_And in the space of one word---claiming him, rescuing him as well as herself---his world had changed forever._

_***  
After they'd left the brownstone, Catherine kept her hold on his hand, seemingly not noticing that it was covered in blood. While Vincent absorbed that bit of information---how could she see and not be revolted at what he was?---another part of his mind tracked what Catherine was saying. “I'll tell them something, Vincent. I'll protect you and your world. Don't worry.”_

_“I'm not worried,” Vincent said. Contrary to all of Father's dark mutterings about topsiders who couldn't be trusted, he knew this woman. She'd keep their secret, even if it killed her to do so. “Are you injured at all?” Vincent asked; the bond between them was so new, so untested, he wasn't sure if he could or should rely on it._

_“I'm bruised and a little scraped up, but nothing a hot shower can't fix,” Catherine replied. “Are you injured?”_

_It was a reasonable question, given the blood that coated him, but Vincent shook his head. “No.”_

_Catherine stopped. “Oh, Vincent. You risked so much coming tonight.” Her small hand touched his quilted vest, seemingly not noticing the stains on it, and he felt his heart begin to hammer at the contact. Surely she must feel it...but no, she had not. “You saved my life tonight, Vincent. Thank you.”_

_They had said their goodbyes then but when Catherine left, a part of his heart had gone with her._

_***  
Vincent had encountered Father next, just as he was entering his chamber to wash off the dried and caked blood off his hands. “I'm all right,” Vincent said, hoping to head off the inevitable discussion._

_“Hmm. Whose blood is this, then?”_

_The question was delivered in Father's starched, no-nonsense tones, and Vincent might have sighed. “Father, it's over. I'm not hurt. Catherine is not hurt. Can we leave it at that?”_

_“No, we most certainly cannot leave it at that. You're covered in blood, Vincent. If it's not yours and it's not hers, whose is it? Did you...hurt someone tonight?”_

_One of Father's classic understatements, Vincent thought, feeling Father's unease as an undercurrent of his words. Father's own preference since Jesse, since the smugglers, was to not mention the deaths directly. But there was no hiding from those grey falcon's eyes. “Yes. They were going to kill her, Father. I had no choice.”_

_Father blew out his breath once. “No, I don't suppose you did. But Vincent...the risks! And if she tells anyone what she saw---”_

_“She won't.”_

_“I wish I was as sure as you are, my son, but I'm not.”_

_And from that opinion, Father would not be budged. Vincent finished washing his hands and face and changing his clothes but when he dreamed that night, he dreamed of Catherine._

***  
“I remember those dreams,” the Other said. 

“Yes, I'm sure you do,” Vincent replied, “since you're me.”

“You admit it?” his twin asked, grinning with all of his fangs showing.

“Do I have a choice?” Vincent replied. 

The Other folded his arms. “Well, no, not if you want to regain your sanity.” He sobered then. “Those dreams disturbed you. Why?”

“You have to ask? Look at me,” Vincent replied, baring his fangs in what was most definitely not a smile. “I can kill, so easily. I could injure her, so easily. And yet I dreamed of....”

“Making love to her?” his twin responded. “If you need any proof that you're a normal guy, I'd say that's it.”

Vincent rolled his eyes, something he hadn't done since he and Devin were children, mimicking Father behind his back. “You don’t understand. I killed two people that night and dreamed of making love to a woman I barely knew just hours later. How is that normal?”

The Other grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him, hard. “For one thing, you didn't 'barely know' Catherine. Oh, sure, you'd just met but...the mate has been ours, as we have been hers, from the beginning. Even then, you knew it---you might not have wanted to admit it, but you knew it. For another, having normal desires doesn't make you a monster either.”

“There was more to the dream,” Vincent said, stepping away from his twin. 

“Yes. I know that too. You saw yourself hurting her. Which is ridiculous. Have you never wondered why our bond with her is, why it exists?”

Vincent glared at his twin. “You know I have.”

“And? Any conclusions coming out of that overused brain of yours?”

“So that I cannot hurt her, or allow her to be hurt,” Vincent said, voice just above a whisper.

“Exactly,” his twin said. “So…you’re wasting all this mental energy on an outcome which can never, will never, happen. You can’t hurt her. You won’t”

“But I almost did,” Vincent said. “In the cave. I didn’t know it was her.”

“Yes, you did,” the Other said, looking thoroughly exasperated and bearing an astonishing resemblance in that instant to Father in one of his less-patient moods. “I was there too, remember? You were attacking me---which was not one of your brighter decisions, but we’ve covered that---and she entered the cave. You pulled the blow that would have killed her. You did. Not me.”

Vincent considered the words from his other self. “I want to believe,” he began, but the pull of uncertainty, of fear was hard to resist; it was too much a part of him to easily be shed now.

The Other’s voice softened. “I know you do. But we’ve had many years to believe that love like this isn’t for us.” He paused. “Do you remember what happened after Paracelsus drugged us?”

Mixed in the memory of his recovery from Paracelsus’ drug, Catherine’s presence had stood out in a bright candle flame, the light in his darkness. “She stayed with me.”

“Yes, she did,” the Other said. 

***  
 _After he’d returned from the burning wreckage of Paracelsus’ lab, Vincent felt his weariness washing over him in a slow-moving tide. He’d managed a brief message to Father on the pipes to let him know of Paracelsus’ probable demise in the fire, then headed for the comfort of his chamber. His head ached and now that the adrenaline of the hunt for Paracelsus had faded, he felt thoroughly ill, diffuse and vaguely unreal…as though the world around him had not quite righted itself._

_He’d encountered Father on the way there, of course, with his doctor’s bag carried in his good hand---Vincent winced to see the bandage on his shoulder---muttering darkly about smoke inhalation and drug overdose and all sorts of dire speculations that Vincent could only barely follow. When Vincent entered his chamber, it was to find Catherine sitting there reading a book. Waiting for him. “You stayed,” he murmured, surprised by this grace, that she hadn’t been appalled or shocked at the growling demon he’d been under the influence of Paracelsus’ drug._

_She jumped up as soon as he entered. “Of course---how could I leave? Vincent, are you all right?”_

_“No,” he managed, not liking to confess any weakness but not able to lie to her either. “I suspect I now know what a hangover feels like.”_

_Father had grabbed his arm and steered him to his bed just before the dizziness came over him in a wave. “Father, is he---“ Catherine asked_

_“He’ll be fine, Catherine,” Father said curtly, a doctor focused on his patient. “You can return above if you like.”_

_“I’m not leaving unless he wants me to go,” Catherine said, folding her arms. “Vincent, do you want me to stay?”_

_He’d never been able to handle anyone else around him on the rare times when he’d felt ill---only Father, and sometimes not even him. But Catherine’s presence was another matter entirely---soothing and anchoring. “If you can,” he said._

_“I can,” Catherine said, taking his hand._

_Father had glanced from one to the other and grumbled a bit under his breath, but had continued with his exam as if Catherine wasn’t there. By the time he was finished, Vincent was too tired to make out much of Father’s diagnosis. It was only when he felt Catherine’s gentle tug on his arm that he realized Father had left. “He wants you to rest, if you can,” Catherine said._

_Fighting a yawn, which would have exposed all of his fangs, Vincent nodded. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”_

_Catherine smiled. “I’m not surprised. You weren’t fully recovered when you went out after Paracelsus, were you?”_

_He shook his head, then regretted it almost instantly as the dull thud of his headache escalated to a roar. “It was necessary, Catherine.”_

_She squeezed his shoulder. “I know it was. I just wish…Vincent, you could have been killed. I saw what Paracelsus did to Jimmy---he went out alone too. I don’t want to lose you.”_

_Vincent looked up at her then, remembering all she had risked to bring him back out of the darkness. “I don’t want to be lost.”_

_“Well, you're not. You won't be,” Catherine said, smiling. “Father was quite...insistent that I let you get some rest. Shall I read to you?”_

_“I won't be awake for most of it, I'm sure,” Vincent said, returning her smile and not feeling quite so ill. “But if you wish...I would like that.”_

_The story she read was The Velveteen Rabbit  and in the minutes before sleep claimed him finally, Vincent thought, _ She has made me real.

***

“The mate knows who we are, and is not afraid,” the Other said, looking at him from across the chessboard in his chamber. “She stayed with us even though she'd seen us become a snarling beast just hours before. If you can't trust your instincts, perhaps you should trust hers. Catherine knew that you could never hurt her. Even Father knew.”

That brought Vincent up short. “How do you mean?”

“Did you never think of how Catherine ended up in that passage? Father called her, hoping that her voice, our bond with her, would bring us out of our delirium. He never intended for her to touch us, true, but he knew---or suspected---that the one person we could never hurt was her.”

“Perhaps I am not such a beast after all,” Vincent replied, staring at his hands.

“Oh, you are,” the Other said, cheerfully. “But no more than anyone is, when their home and family is threatened.” 

His dark twin came to stand next to him. “Brother, let it go. Such doubts are poison.”

Vincent nodded, gazing at the chessboard where a queen was poised to capture the king. Inside himself, just a bit, there was a tiny crack of light.


	6. Chapter Six- The Sea of Waking Dreams

Chapter Six: The Sea of Waking Dreams

Catherine awoke and stretched, gazing at Vincent. His face was very near hers, and he was starting to look rested for the first time in days, perhaps weeks. She reached out and touched the fine, soft fur on his cheekbones. “Feel better, my love,” she whispered. He made no verbal response---not that she’d thought he would, as utterly exhausted as he was---but Catherine thought she saw the faint suggestion of a smile cross his face. 

She turned at Mary’s cheerful greeting. “Hello, Catherine, how are you this morning?”

Catherine smiled. “Pretty well, I think.”

Mary peered closely at Vincent. “He’s looking better,” she said. “Father will be glad to hear that when he wakes up. William’s made some scones and fresh coffee for breakfast if you want to go eat---I’ll stay with Vincent.”

Catherine’s stomach growled, and she laughed. “Well, that settles that. You won’t mind?”

“Heavens, no,” Mary said, laughing herself. “Between working in the nursery and teaching the older children how to sew, this is about the only quiet time I get during the day. Enjoy your breakfast.”

***  
Breakfast had turned out to be as delicious as Mary had said; William pressed more scones and fruit on her than she was sure anyone could reasonably eat. “Take some back to Father if you can’t eat it. I haven’t had any luck convincing him to eat; maybe you can.”

The coffee and the added blessing of a hot shower had revived her, so when she returned to Vincent’s chamber, Catherine felt much more like her usual self. She entered Vincent’s chamber to see Peter Alcott talking with Father. “Now, Jacob,” Peter was saying.

“Don’t ‘Now, Jacob’ me, Peter,” Father returned. “I’m perfectly capable of deciding---“

“’Deciding,’ what?” Catherine asked. “Hello, Peter. What are you trying to decide, Father?”

Peter smiled. “Oh, Jacob here wants me to believe that he’s capable of deciding when he should rest and eat and so forth. But I’ve been here five minutes and I can tell he’s not been taking care of himself.”

“Father, you said you were going to get some rest,” Catherine said. Upon closer inspection, she could see what Peter was worried about; Father appeared drawn and grey, far more exhausted than even Vincent looked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Father muttered. “But really, Catherine, it’s not the first time. I’ll be fine.”

Catherine muttered something that sounded like “infernally stubborn” and Peter smiled. “She’s got you figured out, Jacob. Look, you’re not a young man anymore and interns’ hours are for interns. Let me keep an eye on Vincent while you get some sleep. I promise I’ll call you if anything changes.”

“And I'll be staying with him too,” Catherine reminded him. She handed him the packed basket that William had given her. “Here's some breakfast too, when you wake up.”

Father looked at her, the ghost of a reluctant smile crossing his face. “I can't win against the both of you. Very well.” 

After he left, Peter turned to Catherine. “That was nicely done, my dear. Thank you for helping.”

Catherine smiled. “You're welcome.” She pulled up a chair next to Vincent's bed and watched as Peter performed his examination. After about an hour, he stood up. “Vital signs are strong and the IV nutrition that Jacob's been giving him seems to be working. All we can do now is wait for him to heal.”

She bit her lip. “Peter, is it normal for him to be sleeping so long?”

Peter pulled up the other chair and sat down. “Did Jacob tell you about the last time he had this illness?”

“A little bit,” Catherine replied. “I know he slept a lot after it.”

“Jacob and I have had this disagreement for years about whether it's really sleep or unconsciousness or something in between that his body forces on him so he can heal. I don't know and really, neither does Jacob.” His mouth quirked in a smile. “But we still keep debating.” He sobered then. “Cathy, he'll awaken. I know he will. Try not to worry.”

Catherine nodded, remembering something her grandmother used to say: Worry is like a rocking chair---it goes nowhere. “Does your bond tell you anything?” Peter asked. 

“Not really,” Catherine said, trying to find the words for something that was so completely outside what most people thought of as normal. “He's...somewhere. Here, but not. It feels like he's dreaming, but it's not quite the same thing. I can't explain it.”

“Then don't try,” Peter said, “but let that sense of him be your reassurance. The best thing you can do for him is what you're already doing. You're here. And I'm sure he knows that.”

She smiled, remembering something she'd sensed during the night. Vincent's sleep had been more restless than it had been the previous night, and she'd been about ready to move to the cot Mary had provided when his hand had clasped her wrist. The bond between them had fired for what felt like the first time in weeks and though he made no sound, and had never so much as opened his eyes, Catherine had heard him quite clearly in her head: _Stay. I need you._

“I will,” she had responded aloud. “I'm not leaving.” His grip on her wrist had relaxed almost immediately and he'd slept soundly the rest of the night. 

“He does,” Catherine said now to Peter. “I know that. I just worry.”

“Of course you do.” They watched Vincent sleep for a time, until another question rose in Catherine's mind. She could have asked Father, of course, but Peter had been there too... “Peter, what was Vincent like as a child?”

“A handful,” Peter said wryly, “though not in a bad way. He was just so curious and bright and quick---and stubborn. I used to tease Jacob that he'd met his match in Vincent.”

Catherine smiled, trying to picture the young Vincent. “I wish I'd known him then,” she said, stroking a lock of Vincent's red-gold hair that had fallen over his shoulder. 

“You met him when you were ready for him,” Peter said. “I used to watch him and think about you, growing up in the same city, and I would toy with the idea of introducing you to this world. I regret that I never did.”

“Why didn't you?” Catherine asked, curious. Peter had been a helper since the beginning; it had been Peter whom a frantic Father had called when Anna had brought the abandoned infant Vincent to the tunnels.

“I thought of asking your mother to be a helper---Caroline had a good heart and a true empathy for people in dire circumstances. But by the time I'd gotten approval from the council to ask her, she'd had you and then when she became sick...I couldn't ask Caroline to take on the burden of secrecy that being a helper requires, not when she already had so much to deal with.”

“No, I suppose not,” Catherine said, thinking that but for that choice, her life might have been so vastly different---growing up, perhaps knowing about the tunnel world...and Vincent.

“In the end, though,” Peter continued, “I think it worked out well. When you met Vincent---even if the circumstances were far less than ideal---you were mature enough to accept him and understand him. I'm not sure you would have been even a couple of years before.”

Catherine thought of the woman she had been, fashion law and Tom Gunther and Stephen Bass, and nodded. “You're right. Sometimes, I don't recognize myself, the woman I was then. It all seems so unreal now.”

“You're a different person, Cathy,” Peter said., smiling. “Not that you were all that bad to begin with. Even before Vincent, you were changing, growing. He came into your life, and you came into his, when you both were ready for each other.” He paused. “I'm glad Vincent has you. I know Jacob is too, though he probably hasn't admitted it. He just never thought that romantic love was a possibility for Vincent.” 

“He's my possibility,” Catherine said. “He always has been.”

***  
Vincent opened his eyes to find he was standing in a large patch of sunlight. He knew, somewhere, somehow, that it wasn't literal sunlight, but the warmth from his bond with Catherine. She had always been light and sunshine to him and a whole host of things he'd never experienced before but only read about. 

He was not surprised to see the Other next to him, stretching out in the warmth, looking more like a dark-maned lion than ever. “The mate loves us.” 

“She does,” Vincent said, feeling the warmth beginning to melt the ice in his soul. 

“We never thought this was possible for us. Father was quite...insistent,” his twin said.

“He meant only to protect me from what he saw as harm,” Vincent replied, a ghost of old, ancient pain surfacing. 

The Other sat up, looking annoyed. “Even into our adulthood, he was still trying to decide things for us that were ours, and ours alone, to decide. Do you remember Isabella?”

Isabella. Izzy. A daughter of one of the helpers, they'd grown up together. He hadn't heard from her in years. “Yes, I remember. And perhaps, in that instance, Father was right.”

“Father was right, and yet he was wrong.” The Other stood in front of him, furred hands planted on his hips. “Vincent, we were an adult when he chased Isabella away from the tunnels, as if to love us was some great unforgivable wrong.”

“Isabella never intended to live below,” Vincent replied. “She would have left eventually anyway.”

“She would have,” his twin growled, “but it would have been her choice. Not Father's.”

***  
 _He had first met Izzy the year before Devin left. Her father, Grant, had been a helper for several years and when his wife died, Grant asked the council for permission to tell his daughter about the tunnels. They had agreed and on her third or fourth visit below, she had been introduced to Vincent. She had not flinched or looked away---the usual reaction---but stared at him in fascination. “Cool,” she'd said finally, and Grant had chuckled. Vincent had relaxed and gazed at this strange girl who seemingly found nothing odd in the way he looked._

_Vincent's first impression of Izzy had been of a girl with crooked teeth and braids of frizzy blond hair. Devin, never one to pass up the opportunity to crack a joke, had called her “Frizzy Izzy” almost from the start. Vincent, who knew something about frizzy hair, had told Devin to knock it off. They had fought about it later, out of Father's watchful eye, and Vincent had won and from then on, if Izzy was below, she was included in whatever activities were going on. She climbed rocks with the boys and scraped her knees just like they did and eventually, the boys forgot Izzy was a girl. “She's just Izzy,” they said._

_Izzy's father died shortly after Devin left. She didn't come below as often as she had before; her uncle Louis was a helper as well but a busy one and not one given to making frequent trips below. A whole year passed, the year of Lisa and Vincent's first descent into madness, before Vincent saw Izzy again. When Izzy returned, Vincent had sentry duty and he could hardly believe it was Isabella when he saw her. She had strange metal things on her teeth---braces, he was told they were called---and the blond hair was still frizzy, but not in braids and she'd grown taller and curvier. She looked, to Vincent's stunned eyes, worlds away from the tomboy of the year before._

_“Hi, Vincent,” Izzy said, hugging him. She looked up at him. “You've grown, you know that?”_

_“Yes,” Vincent said, recovering some of his ability to speak. “I'll be off sentry duty shortly and we can go talk if you want.”_

_“Sure,” Izzy said. “I'm sorry I was gone so long; it wasn't my idea. Uncle Louis needed my help in his store and between that and school---”_

_Some impulse he'd thought dead and buried since Lisa rose within him. Vincent touched her hand. “Izzy, it's okay. Really.”_

_She glanced at him. “I heard about Devin; Winslow told me he left. I'm so sorry.”_

_The loss of Devin was still an aching wound, but Vincent managed to nod anyway. “Thanks. I was sorry to hear about your father. He was a good man.” Izzy nodded, her feelings of loss echoing his own. Vincent tilted his head, hearing the sounds of footsteps. He knew that walk. “Ethan's here to relieve me. Is there someplace you'd like to go to talk, Izzy?”_

_Izzy smiled. “It's Isabella...and how about the Mirror Pool?”_

_Vincent smiled back at her. “The Mirror Pool sounds fine...Isabella.”_

_***  
After that, Isabella came down every few weeks, as often as her school schedule and her job in her uncle's shop would allow. She brought down excess produce her uncle hadn't been able to sell or supplies he wanted to donate, but for Vincent, the most valuable thing she brought was herself. Since Devin, since Lisa, he had not had many friends close to his own age. He spent long hours with her, walking the tunnels, hearing her stories of being a teenager in the world above and enjoying the company of someone who didn't expect him to be other than what he was. _

_It wasn't until he noticed the knowing glances that he realized what his tunnel family were assuming: that he and Isabella were dating. Father had confronted him with it one night after dinner. “What's going on between you and Isabella?”_

_“We're friends, Father. That's all,” Vincent said, beginning to be annoyed. Love was dangerous and no one knew that more than he._

_“That's not what I've been hearing,” Father said. “Vincent, you know you must be careful.”_

_He slammed the door of his wardrobe shut. “'Careful'? Do you say such things to Pascal and Janelle? Or to Winslow and Marta?”_

_“No, but they're---”_

_“What? Normal?” Vincent snarled. “Isabella and I are just friends. I know perfectly well that other such...relationships are not for me. I don't need to hear more on that subject.”_

_“You and Lisa were friends too, once,” Father said, and the words fell leaden in the air. “Vincent, I'm concerned for you, and for Isabella. I don't want to see either of you hurt. Not like...before.”_

_Vincent sat down heavily on the bed. “I know what you're saying, Father. It isn't like that. We're just friends.”_

_Father reached out a hand to touch Vincent's unruly mane. “I'm glad you have a friend. Just please, see that it stays that way.”_

***

“Father did not trust us,” the Other hissed, low and angry in his ear. 

“No,” Vincent said, acknowledging that deep hurt for the first time. “He remembered Lisa.”

“He remembered wrong,” his twin said. “The blame was not entirely ours. And that memory colored every thought, every hope he had for us.”

Vincent recognized the anger that coated the Other’s voice; it was an old and familiar fury, grown no less potent with the passage of time. “He insisted we were the same as everyone else, but then told us we were different from everyone else in this one thing. Which was it?” the Other continued.

The contradiction was one he had felt before and dealt with in a thousand different forms—as his friends paired off and started families of their own, in the unspoken demands of his tunnel family that he be only and exactly what they expected of him, in Father’s outright anger and hostility when he and Catherine had fallen in love. _Am I not a man?_ Vincent wondered now. _Am I not allowed to love and feel and need as everyone else does?_

“We've never felt comfortable admitting we needed anything, have we?” the Other said, sitting cross-legged on the purple grass. 

“No, I haven't been.” He remembered growing tall so fast, at the end towering over even Mitch and being desperately afraid that people might be as intimidated by him as they were by Mitch.

“There's nothing wrong with needing, you know, nothing wrong with being a little selfish once in a while. And you're not Mitch, who bullied and intimidated people by fear and violence.” The Other stood, skipping a stone across the lake, a lake that hadn't existed just a second before. “Why have you never told Catherine you need her?”

“She knows it,” Vincent replied. “I can feel it in her.”

“Ah, yes, through the bond,” his twin said. “The problem is, Brother, you still need to tell her these things.” He stopped by the lake, and turned to Vincent. “I'll tell you why you've never told Catherine you need her, while you waited until we were literally at death's door before you ever told her you loved her. Because you worry about binding her to you.”

“I only wanted her to be free to choose someone else,” Vincent said.

“She won't, you know. Not ever. Which means you need to pull your head out of your Shakespeare and your Rilke and your Thomas, and just tell the mate that you love her and you need her and you want her in your life. She deserves that.”

Vincent felt the weight of a clawed hand on his shoulder. “And just as importantly, so do you.”


	7. Chapter Seven- And Echoed in the Well of Silence

Chapter 7: And Echoed in the Well of Silence

Catherine turned in her sleep, dreaming of a bright field of sunflowers. Vincent was beside her, holding her hand and the summer's heat beat down on them. It was hot, so very hot and the yellow of the flowers burned her eyes....the sun was so fiery....why was it so warm? Some inner warning of danger made her her eyes snap open and she stared at Vincent. “Oh, _no,”_ she said. 

It was cold in the chamber but the heat of Vincent's body burned her. She threw on a shawl over her nightgown and rushed into Father's chamber. “Father,” Catherine said, “please wake up.”

He came awake almost instantly, a doctor's reflexes never forgotten. “What is it, Catherine?”

“I think Vincent's running a fever,” she said.

“A fever, you say?” Father said, rubbing his eyes briefly. “I was afraid of that.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You were?”

“It's probably from those chest wounds---we cleaned them but they were quite deep, you remember.”

Catherine nodded. Those wounds had been the deepest, the ragged tears in the skin making them hard to close, and finally Father had just settled for flushing the wounds out with saline as best he could and bandaging them lightly. She watched as he grabbed his doctor's bag and followed him into Vincent's chamber.

Vincent's skin was flushed, dark with fever. Father lifted one of the gauze bandages and pressed gently, stopping when he felt Vincent flinch and snarl in his sleep. “I know it hurts. I'm sorry.” Father turned to Catherine. “I'm afraid he's developed an infection in those wounds.” He stood, banging out a quick message on the pipes. “I'm going to send someone above with a message for Peter. He needs antibiotics, and quickly. We've run out.”

She tore her gaze from Vincent's face. “I can go, if you want.”

Father shook his head. “No, I appreciate it, but...no. Vincent needs you more, here.”

Catherine nodded. “What can I do, then?” 

“Stay with him. I'll send Geoffrey up to reach Peter.” Father placed one hand on Vincent's forehead. “You're right. His fever is quite high.”

“Can you give him anything for it?” Catherine asked. 

Father shook his head. “No. He reacts badly to many medications. We'll have to bring the fever down some other way until the antibiotics come.” He stood and banged out a second message on the pipes and a few short minutes later, Mary came, along with Elijah and Paul. Geoffrey arrived just behind them, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“What's going on, Father?” Geoffrey asked. 

“I need you to take a message to Peter. Can you do that, Geoffrey?” 

The boy--- _no, young man,_ Catherine thought, wondering when he'd grown so tall---nodded. “No problem, Father. I'll find him for you.” And just like that, he was gone. 

Father turned his attention to Elijah and Paul. “Can you please lift him? Catherine, Mary, we'll need to get the quilts out from under him.” 

She watched as Elijah and Paul gently lifted Vincent up, pulling off his nightshirt and then she and Mary pulled the quilts out from under him, folding them neatly on the chair. With a muffled groan, Vincent was settled back on the mattresses. Father filled a wash-basin from the dry sink in the corner and dampened some cloths with the cool water. Together they ran the cooling water over Vincent's body, turning the golden fur dark. 

After what could have been a few minutes or an hour, Father stopped and placed his hand on Vincent's forehead. “No change,” he said, worrying at his lower lip.  
Catherine dampened another cloth. “Then we'll just keep going,” she said, running the cloth behind Vincent's neck and watching as the water trickled down the strong lines of his jaw. “What do we do if this doesn't work?”

“It has to,” Father said. “We don't have many other options.”

***

The morning wore into the afternoon as Vincent’s temperature continued to rise. Geoffrey had sent a note down through a helper; Peter was in emergency surgery and not expected back anytime soon. Mouse had brought bags of ice from the community’s freezers and they’d applied the ice near the major arteries. Then, and only then, had his temperature begun to fall. “I don’t understand this infection,” Father said. “He usually heals so quickly. I didn’t see this coming.”

Catherine placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault that he got an infection, Father. You did all you could.”

Father’s grey eyes looked at her, and then past her, into another time, another place. “No, if I’d done that, we might not be here.”

The brittle edge of bitterness in his words startled Catherine. “I don’t understand.”

“Three times I had the chance to kill Paracelsus and three times I didn’t. And now my son is paying the price for my cowardice.”

Paracelsus. Just hearing the name was enough to make Catherine's stomach clench, remembering all Vincent had endured at his hands. That he'd kidnapped her from her balcony and tried to kill her was secondary, she thought, to the torture Vincent had experienced. “Father, I need to know,” she began, and stopped, unsure of how to phrase her next words. She’d faced hardened criminals in court, men with dead eyes and hollow souls, but words failed her now. 

“What do you need to know, Catherine?” Father asked. “Anything you ask, I’ll tell you.” His eyes settled on Vincent’s flushed face. “I owe you that much.”

There was no other way, she thought, to lance the poison except to be quick about it. “Why didn’t you tell Vincent about Paracelsus? About Anna? He’s lived with half a story all his life and if you’d just told him what really happened, maybe…”

“Maybe he’d not be lying here? Maybe he’d not have been driven to the very edge of madness?” Father’s voice held no self-pity. “You haven’t said anything I haven’t thought a thousand times since.” He paused. “The short answer is, I was ashamed.”

“Why shame? Anna’s death wasn’t your fault,” Catherine said.

“It was,” Father said. “I made a mistake, a dreadful one that cost a good woman her life. Anna, you see, knew that John had become unstable, but he was quite skilled in hiding it from the rest of us. When Anna first came to me…I turned her away, thinking she was exaggerating. John was my friend; surely he couldn't be capable of such things. So I sent her back to him, and left her---and Vincent---in the care of a madman. John killed her the next night and would have escaped with Vincent had her body not been found first. No, my dear, you can’t accuse me of worse than I’ve done.”

“And then after…” Catherine prompted, knowing there was more; the unspoken words pulsed between them on a current of grief and ancient pain.

“And then after,” Father continued. “It was my own vanity, my need to be perfect to lead this community. Too many people depended on me to keep them safe; I didn’t want to admit to anyone, least of all Vincent, that my stupidity, my arrogance had killed a young woman who had trusted me with her life and his own.” He paused. “Anna loved him so and would have been his mother, had she lived. How could I tell him I took that away from him?” 

“Paracelsus did that, Father. No one else.”

He shook his head. “Who’s more responsible, Catherine? The cancer or the one who lets the cancer continue? After we found Anna’s body and discovered what John had planned for Vincent…we expelled him. The argument was made that we should have executed him, thrown him into the abyss for his crimes. But I argued against it, shouted down those calling for blood, because I didn’t want the community’s healing to be based on revenge. And John had been my friend...once. If I’d known then....” Father shrugged then and his eyes were old and tired. “I did what I thought was best. But I’ve been wrong a great many times, Catherine.” 

She looked at Vincent, remembering his shattered, stunned agony the night he killed Paracelsus. The anger twisted and roiled inside her.”You could have told him later. Even when Paracelsus resurfaced, you still could have told him. Instead you sent Vincent out---alone!---to face him without knowing the full truth of what Paracelsus was capable of. Father, how could you put him at risk like that?” 

“I was wrong,” Father said. “I don’t have any explanation, except that once the lie was told, the truth left half-revealed, it was easier to keep going than to admit I’d lied to him all those years.” He ran a hand through his hair. “So many times, I’d look at him and want to start explaining….but I couldn’t. I’d almost convinced myself that it wouldn’t matter in the end, that Paracelsus would give up, find a new target for his obsessions, and I'd never need to tell Vincent just how wrong I'd been.” He gave a short bark of laughter, utterly without humor. “I’d forgotten that John was always a much better chess player than I.” 

“Do you think there's still a risk from his followers?” Catherine asked.

Father shrugged. “Oh, they're still below, if that's what you mean. But Paracelsus was very much the dominant force behind his community. We've been monitoring the message traffic from their pipes; they're disordered, in confusion, without him to guide them. That may change, of course, and we'll have to remain vigilant, but I think most of the danger is past.” 

Catherine nodded. She leaned towards him, intense. “Father, when Vincent comes out of this---and he will---you have to tell him what you've told me. All of it. No matter how much it hurts you.”

“I know,” Father replied. “And I hope that in his great heart, there will be forgiveness for the pain I've caused him.”

***

It was raining, Vincent noticed, a hot steaming rain that evaporated almost as soon as it hit the purple grass. The Other made a wordless sound of disgust. “I don't really enjoy being wet,” his twin said wiping off the rain as it dripped from his dark, ragged bangs. “I don' t suppose you'd care to go inside?”

“Inside where?” Vincent asked, wiping the heated rain off his damp forehead. There didn't seem to be a shelter around. 

And in an instant, they were on Catherine's balcony. The Other opened the balcony doors---not a difficult task, since they were only barely hanging on their hinges. “Come in,” he gestured. 

Vincent felt an instinctive recoil, both at the sight of the damage he'd caused in his delirium just a few days before, and at the thought of entering Catherine's apartment. “I can't.”

“You didn't have a problem a few days ago,” the Other observed. “And you know the mate wouldn't mind. What gives?” Without waiting for an answer, the Other gave one sharp tug on Vincent’s hand and all but yanked him into Catherine’s apartment.

Vincent blinked. “Are you sure I have the right apartment?”

The Other laughed. “This is what Catherine sees when she dreams of us with her.”

It was not the interior of Catherine’s apartment as he remembered it, pale interiors and clean lines. This was a cottage library, full of overstuffed furniture and bookshelves filled to the ceilings. “It’s the library at her father’s place in Connecticut,” the Other said. 

_Connecticut._ Vincent winced. “One more place I’ve failed her,” he said.

The Other stared at him, hard. “Are you the same person as you were then?”

Vincent shook his head. “Then don’t assume,” the Other continued, “that you’ll never see this place. Your love, the love you share, has the power to remake your reality and shake all your assumptions. Think on it, will you?”

Vincent nodded and was startled when his twin handed him a towel. “You’re dripping on the hardwood floors.”

“So are you,” Vincent replied. 

“Nope, I’m not. Figments don’t drip,” the Other said, grinning. 

Vincent dried himself off, and sat gingerly on the leather couch. “It's comfortable, isn't it?” the Other said, propping one booted leg on the coffee table. 

Vincent nodded. “So why am I here?” he asked. 

The Other shrugged. “Isabella. Catherine. Why you're still letting old fears of our beastliness run your life.”

Vincent folded his arms. “Isabella left to attend college in California. She was never afraid of me.”

“No, but you certainly were afraid of her, weren't you? Afraid that if you told her how you felt, that she'd reject you. Or were you more afraid of Father's reaction?”

A fire appeared in the stone fireplace, burning brightly. Vincent stared into it, remembering. “Isabella was never going to stay below; there was no point in telling her how I felt. I'd just have burdened her with something she didn't need to know.”

The Other rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Are those Father's words I hear?” Before Vincent could answer, the Other plunged on. “Vincent, Father has done his best to raise us. But he's also put us in an impossible position, insisting that you be only half of what you are, that you be 'normal.'” 

“He never---” Vincent began.

“Never what? Came out and said that? No. But how many times did he break up our horseplay with the other boys in the tunnels because he was afraid we would hurt them? How often did we make him uncomfortable with our differences---what we could hear and smell and see and sense? You know he stopped trying to measure such things, even in our medical records. We made him uncomfortable.”

“Yes,” Vincent said. There was no denying such a thing; the smell of Father's unease had been dense and thick whenever some oddity, some strangeness had occurred.   
“And our visions---he has disregarded those too, especially when they concerned the mate,” his twin said. 

“He's a man of science,” Vincent said. “How could he be expected to---”

“To believe? Forget believing, then, how about trusting us, because _we are his son and he should know we don't exaggerate?”_ The Other snorted. “When that man, Stephen Bass, was stalking Catherine and we had a vision of her danger, Father dismissed the visions as simple jealousy. Sure. Because we always get precognitive visions from mere jealousy.”

“I _was_ jealous,” Vincent admitted, finding for the first time no shame in admitting it, or in acknowledging the feeling of how much he had disliked Stephen Bass.   
“But I...the danger was quite real.”

“It was,” the Other agreed. “And when we returned to the tunnels, what did Father say? Did he apologize for being wrong?”

“No, he didn't,” Vincent said. “In fact, he was quite determined to ignore the whole incident.”

“Of course,” his twin responded. “Because heaven forbid Father should ever admit that he was wrong, that you were capable of things outside his experience.”

Vincent chuckled dryly. “I've always been outside his experience. Outside everyone's, for that matter. To say the least.”

“So we are,” the Other agreed. “But Father knew us and he should have known better.” 

“Catherine didn't,” Vincent said. 

“Not then, no. And it hurt terribly,” the Other replied. “But it was all very new to her that we could know such things. Father had no such excuse.” 

Vincent started at the touch of a clawed hand on his shoulder. “Brother, you have to be content in yourself, in your abilities, in whatever we are, before you can be whole.”

“I know,” Vincent said. “I'm trying to learn.”

The Other chuckled. “You'll do.”

***  
Father awoke instantly at the touch of Catherine's hand on his arm. “Father, look. His fever has broken.”

“Oh, thank God,” Father murmured, touching his son's forehead and feeling nothing but the clammy dampness of the end of a fever. Vincent was sleeping soundly again, holding Catherine's hand tightly in his own. 

He sat down heavily in his chair. “Catherine, I was so afraid---”

“I know,” she said. God, didn't she just? “But you'll have that chance to talk. Don't waste it.”

He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. “I won't.”


	8. Chapter Eight- Into the Labyrinth

Chapter 8: Into the Labyrinth

“Hey Catherine,” Pascal's soft voice said from the doorway. “How are you doing?”

“Great, thanks,” she said, putting down her book and glancing over at Vincent. “What brings you down this way?”

“I thought I'd stop by. Zach's manning the pipes for a bit this morning and I make him nervous standing over him so...” Pascal shrugged. “I remember being his age and manning my first few shifts on the pipes. Nothing worse than having an old guy standing over your shoulder.”

Catherine smiled. “I felt the same way when I worked for my dad.” She gestured towards the empty chair. “Sit down if you want.” 

Pascal sat down just on the edge of the seat, the pipes in his hands clanking against the wood. “How's Vincent doing?” he asked.

“Better now, since his fever broke last night,” Catherine replied. “Father will be in to check on him soon.”

“I'm glad he's doing better. I'd have come earlier but---”

“But you have to work, too. I understand, Pascal. And I'm sure he knows you're here.”

“I hope so,” Pascal replied. “I remember when we were kids, chasing after the older boys. He was stronger than the lot of them, even then, but so gentle too. He's been so strong for so long, and to see him like this...” 

She nodded. “I know what you mean. But he'll recover. Father says so, and Peter. And we all just have to believe it.”

Pascal chuckled. “You sound like Winslow.”

Catherine smiled, remembering the gruff blacksmith. “I do?”

“Oh, yeah,” Pascal responded. “Of course, he'd say it a little different, probably something like---” and his voice deepened into a passable imitation of Winslow's baritone--- “Father's said it and Peter's said it, so that means it's so.” 

Catherine laughed. The intonation, the phrasing, were dead on. “Pascal, how come I never knew you were a natural mimic?”

He grinned. “Probably because you haven't spent this much time down here before. We're all full of surprises. Just don't ever get into a poker match with Mary. He tilted his head, listening to a burst of pipe chatter. “That'll be Elizabeth, teasing Zach with her request for pumpkin vermillion spiced paint---just to see if he can handle relaying it.” He stood and banged out a quick message, too fast for Catherine to follow. “What did you say?” she asked.

“I told her,” Pascal responded, grinning, “that it's not nice to torture the new guy and that if she knows what's good for her, she'll settle down, else I'll have Mouse pick up some fuchsia paint for her next time. She hates fuchsia.”

Catherine smiled. Another brief message sounded out; she thought it might be Zach but wasn't sure. “Zach?”

Pascal nodded. “Yeah, probably wondering how to short-hand 'vermillion.' He must not have gotten my response back yet.” He stood. “I better get back before things get even more tangled up. If you need a break or anything at all, just bang on the pipes.”

“I will,” Catherine replied, watching him leave, realizing he'd assumed she knew enough pipecode to make such a request. She'd learned a good bit of it over the years, but her knowledge was taken for granted just like....just like one of them. And the thought warmed her immeasurably. The path between their worlds, once so fraught with obstacles, now seemed a little...clearer.

***

Father was her next visitor, accompanied by Peter. “I'm so sorry I wasn't able to get below sooner, Jacob,” Peter said. 

Father caught Catherine's eyes and smiled. “We muddled through but I'd appreciate it if you'd examine him just the same.”

“Of course,” Peter said. “I've also brought down some more antibiotics.” 

Catherine watched as he performed his exam. Peter finally pulled the stethoscope from his ears and smiled. “Everything sounds fine, Jacob. Heart sounds are good, lungs are clear and there's no sign of fever. I'd say his temperature is about normal, but I'll go ahead and put an antibiotic in his IV just to be sure there's no lingering infection.”  
He didn't use a thermometer, Catherine noticed, then remembered that Father hadn't used one either. “I was just wondering...Peter, you don't use a thermometer. How do you know?”

“Experience,” Peter said. “But we haven't used a thermometer on Vincent since..when was that, Jacob? 1959?”

“1960,” Father said, automatically. “The year of our last big measles outbreak. Vincent was the last child to catch it that year, and the first one to utterly destroy a thermometer. He'd been running a high fever and I gather he didn't like having a strange object in his mouth. He bit clear through it.”

“And we're just lucky he didn't end up accidentally ingesting the mercury,” Peter said. “But anyway, ever since then...we've trained ourselves not to have to use one.”   
“I imagine,” Catherine said, trying to picture what it must have been like for these two men to tend to such an unusual child. “So there are signs, besides feeling how hot he is, when he's having a fever?” 

“Oh, yes,” Father said. “He doesn't get sick that often, but when his temperature is getting too high, he tends to get a pink tinge under his eyes. Did you see it yesterday?”

She nodded. “I didn't know that's what it meant; he just felt too hot.”

“Well, your instinct was right,” Father said. “He's a good three to four degrees cooler now.”

“And resting comfortably,” Peter said. “Which is what his body apparently needs.” 

***

Vincent awoke on the side of a nameless path beneath the tunnels he called home. The faint smell of sulfur in the air caused the fur on his back to rise and his muscles to stiffen. He knew this place, very well...and the sight of the rock cairn told him his guess was correct. This was where they had buried Winslow after his death at Erlick's hands. It had been too dangerous to move him to the catacombs for reburial, and they'd had to settle, regrettably, for an empty tomb near Winslow's father as his monument. 

“Winslow was a good man,” the Other said from just behind him.

The pang of grief had lessened somewhat with time, but it had never completely disappeared. Winslow, who had taken him under his wing after Devin fled; Winslow, who had never looked at him with fear or unease, not even after Lisa left; Winslow, who had never treated him as anything less than just another kid in the tunnels. “He was,” Vincent said, speaking through the sudden lump in his throat. 

“And you couldn't have prevented his death either,” the Other replied. “You must know that.” 

“I know that.”

“Your head knows it, but not your heart,” his twin said. “Vincent, we protect. It's natural to us...but Winslow went for his own reasons, reasons that were good and honorable. And...it's not easy to be the one protected, is it?”

“No,” Vincent replied. “It's not.” Something that had tugged at him since that day demanded a voice. “It was all so...pointless. Paracelsus could have killed us all easily. What was he really planning? I didn't know then and I don't know now...except that whatever it was, it wasn't worth Winslow's life.”

“No plan was,” his twin agreed. “You think there was some deeper plan at work?”

“I cannot understand it,” Vincent said. “If he'd wanted to kill me, he had at least a dozen opportunities on the way down to his lair. If he wanted to kill Catherine and destroy me, he could have done that easily as well. Why orchestrate this whole thing, then leave us both alive?”

“Perhaps...if you consider the whole thing as part of some larger scheme, it might make more sense. How did Erlick die?”

“You know how he died,” Vincent said, the rumble of anger in his words. “Must you force me to say it?”

“It's telling, I think,” the Other said, unmoved. “How did Erlick die?”

“I tore his throat out with my fangs,” Vincent said, feeling the taste of blood filling his mouth again. 

“And that was the first time?” the Other prodded.

“It was the only time,” Vincent hissed. “You know that.”

“I do,” his twin said. “So...might this whole thing have been orchestrated to...instruct us, somehow? Paracelsus clearly intended that our friends should die. Catherine was threatened and nearly killed...and we were forced to kill in a way we never had before. It seems a trap, designed to push us over some mental edge.”

Vincent nodded. “But for what purpose?” 

The Other knelt on the sand next to him. He drew a square with one sharp claw. “Father wants this half,” his twin said, gesturing to one side of the square. “He wants only to see the teacher, the scholar, the gentle man he raised and cared for, the protector of the tunnels.” The Other drew a line down the center of the square. Gesturing to the other side of the square, the Other continued, “Paracelsus wanted what he thought was the other side, the warrior, the primal beast who kills without thought or mercy. He might have thought that if he removed what he saw as our civilizing influences...that we would become the beast he always thought we were.”

Vincent sat back on his heels, rocked. Had that been what all of Paracelsus' machinations had ultimately been about---to reduce him to an animal state, the better to do...what? He shook his head. “It makes no sense.”

“Wait, you wanted logic from a madman?” the Other asked dryly. “This is Paracelsus we're talking about. It made sense to him at the time. Now what you have to do is decide what to do now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Catherine asked you to talk to her on the way back. She knew something was wrong and yet you didn't tell her everything. Why? Surely the mate is worthy of our trust.” 

“Of course she is,” Vincent said. “But Erlick...how was I to confess that to her?”

“Don't fool yourself about what the mate doesn't know,” the Other said. “She was awake that night, remember? She saw us.”

***  
 _The trip back from Paracelsus' lair had been unnerving to say the least. There was very little light and fear of retribution kept Vincent's nerves constantly on edge. Catherine's presence next to him only added to his fears---she was not well and needed rest and water, but they couldn't stop until he was sure they were both safe. So, hating himself for having to push her, Vincent had insisted on a quick pace until they'd reached the small cavern where Pascal had told him he'd stashed their camping equipment._

_“We can rest here,” Vincent said. “This is too close to the inhabited tunnels for Paracelsus and his followers.”_

_“Oh, good,” Catherine said, sinking to the sand in a graceless, exhausted heap. “If I never have to move again, it'll be too soon.”_

_Guilt struck him---she'd been kidnapped by Paracelsus, nearly burned alive and then, he'd forced her to move faster in her exhaustion. Catherine's head came up and she stared him in the eye. Even smudged with smoke and dirty and sweaty, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Vincent. I'm fine. Or I will be. I didn't want to linger there either.”_

_His eyes widened slightly---did she know she'd heard his thoughts, that he hadn't spoken out loud? ”I don’t blame you,” he said, wondering again at the strength of the bond they shared. “Sit. Rest. There’s a small river outlet close to here; I’ll refill our canteens.”_

_Catherine nodded. “Be careful, Vincent.”_

_At the water's edge, he filled the canteens and then---convinced he was out of her sight and hearing---was he able to rinse his mouth finally of the last taste of the giant's blood. The nausea twinged again at the memory of how he'd had to kill Erlick, but at least most of the taste was finally out of his mouth._

_He returned with the canteens to find she’d wrapped herself in his cloak and had started a fire with the supplies Pascal had left. At his surprise, she managed a tired laugh and a wan smile. “I was a Girl Scout once, Vincent. If I can’t manage a fire with a cigarette lighter and some dry tinder, they’d probably take my badges away.”_

_Vincent laughed then too, and handed her a canteen. “Drink it slowly, Catherine. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”_

_“What about you? You haven’t touched your canteen.”_

_“I will…later. Are you hungry at all?”_

_“A little,” Catherine replied, “but I can wait if we’re short on supplies.”_

_“We’re not,” Vincent said. “Pascal left us some dry food—it won’t be much but it should feed us until we can return to the home tunnels, so long as we're careful in our rationing.” Tugging open a satchel, he unearthed some granola bars and a loaf of William’s traveling bread. “It's not a lot, I know....”_

_She took a chunk of the bread from him and a granola bar. “Vincent, to me this looks better than all the Thanksgiving feasts I've ever seen.” Catherine tilted her head. “What about you? Aren't you going to eat?”_

_He couldn't tell her that the food held no interest for him, not with the remembered taste of blood in his mouth. There wouldn't ever be words for something like that. “I will,” Vincent replied but made no move to eat._

_There was no sound for a time, just the sound of their breathing, the crackling of the fire, and the metallic sound of the water sloshing in the canteen as Catherine drank. Vincent looked over to see her staring fixedly at the fire and realized how tired she must be. “Catherine,” he said. “Rest. Sleep. This place is relatively safe and we still have a long way to go to get home.”_

_“What about you?” she asked. “You've traveled a long journey, rescued me, fought for your life, and buried a friend. You need to sleep too, I'm sure.”_

_Though his muscles ached from the fatigue that had settled over him like a lead blanket, Vincent shook his head. “Someone has to stand watch.”_

_“Then wake me when you're tired,” Catherine said. “I know you're tired---you have to be.”_

_Vincent nodded, not wanting to wake her at all, but knowing too that he had to be awake to lead them home. Catherine stretched out beside the fire and was asleep almost before her eyes closed._

_For a time, Vincent watched her sleep, the small, slim woman who had survived dangers that had terrified him. She was strong; he'd known that from the first moment she'd awakened in his chamber all those months before. But hers was a rare kind of courage, the courage to block their bond in the face of her terror...just to try and protect him. She was a miracle, and a wonder._

_It was growing colder in the cavern as night fell and Vincent reached for his own satchel, intending to pull out another blanket. The distinctive _iron-smoke-coffee_ tang of Winslow's belongings hit him, and Vincent realized he'd picked up Winslow's satchel, not his own. In a rush, all the strain and emotions of the past few days came over him again, things he'd had to avoid focusing on just to get them out of that hell hole alive---his terror at Catherine's kidnapping and the awful dead silence of their bond, the shifting of Winslow's cracked skull bones under his fingers, burying Winslow in the cairn and the funeral ceremony—too brief for the man Winslow had been----the second battle with Erlick, and Catherine herself, nearly burned alive by a madman. _

_It was too much to remember, too much to keep buried, and a sob escaped him and another one and then despite himself, he was gasping, trying to keep the sobs inside. Vincent started when he felt a small hand touch his arm. “Vincent, it's okay. I'm here,” Catherine said._

_“Catherine, I'm...” he managed._

_“Don't you dare say you're sorry,” Catherine said, pulling him closer. “Let me in, Vincent. Please?”_

_He clasped her hand, placing it against his heart. “You're already in,” Vincent replied, not fully realizing how true it was until he'd said it._

_“Then tell me when you're hurting, Vincent. Don't go all noble and try to hide it.” Catherine tilted her head to look at him, the orange of the fire reflecting pinpoints in her green eyes. “It's not just Winslow, is it?”_

_Nausea rose again on the memory of the giant's blood in his mouth. “No,” he managed, “it's not...but I can't...the words...”_

_“Then don't,” Catherine replied, clasping his hand. “But...would you tell me about Winslow, what he was like? I wish I'd known him better.”_

_That, he had been able to do...and in the hour that followed before they both went to sleep, he had found some measure of peace in the retelling of Winslow's life._

***  
“You never told her exactly what happened between you and Erlick, but she sensed it just the same.” His dark alter tilted his head, studying him. “Why didn't you tell her?” 

“How do you suppose _that_ would come up in conversation?” Vincent asked, spreading his hands so that the claws glinted in the dim light. “Think about it. Was I to tell the woman I love that I'd just killed a man...with my teeth? Like an animal?”

“Well, yes,” the Other said, ignoring the sarcasm. “That would have been a start. Even after all this time, everything we have seen together with her, you're still afraid to be weak with her, to lean on her.”

“Because there are some things I cannot share with her!” Vincent spat. “And she's already seen too much of what I am, what I can do. I can't make her a part of that.”

“Don't be an ass,” the Other snarled back. “Don't you think she already is? You've let her in, but you're still trying to hide from her. You can't have it both ways. The love you share means that you have to share everything, even the bits you don't like or wish hadn't happened.” The Other shook his head. “That overused brain of yours must be good for more than quoting odd Shakespearean bits. Use it. Don't shut her out.”

“It would be one more thing Catherine would have to overcome when she looks at me,” Vincent said, folding his hands so that the hated claws turned inward. “And I can't... _I won't_...do that to her.”

Vincent was jolted by a not-so-gentle cuff upside the head. He backed up against the rock wall, snarling and preparing to strike, feeling the Other's breath on his face as his twin came to face him, nose to nose. “You may think you're protecting her, but here are some home truths, Brother. For one, every time you don't tell her the full truth, or you retreat behind those mental walls, it hurts her. Because it tells the mate that you don't trust her. For another...the mate is a mature woman who knows her own mind. Did it never occur to you that Catherine likes how we look, that she finds us beautiful, even?” 

Vincent shook his head and the Other sighed, stepping back. “And you're supposed to be the brainy one. We know her dreams. And in case you haven't noticed, she's not dreaming of us with a bag over our head. She loves how we look, and that includes the fangs that bother you and the hands you hate. All of us. All of what we are.” 

“She claimed my hands as her own,” Vincent said, and the astonishment of that moment returned full force. 

“Yes, she did. And Catherine meant what she said. Why can't you believe?”

“Because there is nothing beautiful in what my hands have done. That Catherine accepts me for what I am is a miracle---”

“But one you can't fully believe in yet,” the Other finished. “Catherine's love for you is like that mirror you've never hung in your chamber---it can show you who you really are and all that you can become. And you're afraid of it---afraid that she'll turn from you when she looks too closely into that mirror.”

“Yes,” Vincent whispered. There was no denying it, these revelations from a part of himself he'd always shoved aside and ignored before. 

“It's understandable,” his twin said. “Stupid, and incredibly wrong-headed, but understandable. Look in the mirror, Vincent. See what she sees.” 

Vincent nodded. “I will.” A mirror appeared on the wall, glowing brightly. It was the same mirror he'd struck at in his delirium in Catherine's apartment. He'd cut his hands on the glass, he seemed to remember, snarling at the image of what he'd thought was the Other.

With that image in his mind, he walked towards the mirror, heart in his throat. And stopped. “How can this be?” Vincent whispered.

The Other chuckled, a soft breathy laugh. “Don't make me say 'I told you so,'” he said. 

Vincent stared back into the mirror, and the face that stared back at him, the face Catherine saw and loved...was himself. Nothing was smoothed or altered; the fangs were still there, sharp and lethal as ever, the feline muzzle, the split lip and the winged eyebrows arching over blue eyes. The face in the mirror was not that of a normal man, true, but it was the face of a man loved by a woman who never saw his differences as something to be overcome. 

“Now that you know,” the Other said. “Don't forget. You can carry that mirror with you.”

The mirror disappeared; Vincent felt its small welcome heaviness near his heart. “I can. I will.”


	9. Chapter Nine- Underneath My Lucid Skin

Chapter 9: Underneath My Lucid Skin

Catherine awoke from a dream of caverns and mirrors and Winslow. It was late in the tunnels, or very early; the roar of the subway trains had ceased completely and there were only a few muted taps on the pipes. She blinked, trying to remember the shards of the dream, but they'd scattered and all she had was the sense that some important matter had been settled, some weight made less difficult to carry. And what had Winslow had to do with it, anyway? 

She smiled and realized that the warm weight she felt on her lower body was Vincent's own legs intertwined with hers and holding her close. His hand rested on her belly and as Catherine stretched, his hand tightened, not painfully, but enough to hold her secure. “It's okay,” she murmured, stroking the rough silk of his hair, as she had for the hundredth time since they'd brought him out of that cave. “I'm here.” Only then did his hand—and the tension in his neck and shoulders---relax just a little. 

“It's good you are, child,” said a voice from the doorway and Catherine started. 

It was Narcissa. Narcissa, who never left her own chambers. “Hello, Narcissa,” Catherine said, sitting up and pulling her shawl off the back of the nearest chair. Vincent nestled further against her in his sleep but did not waken. 

“Ah, you wonder why I'm here, child, yes?” As Narcissa came further into the chamber, Catherine marveled again at how well she seemed to know her way around, despite being such an infrequent visitor. Narcissa didn't bump into anything even though the chamber was dark, and Catherine wondered at the old woman's ease, given that she'd barked a shin against an object or two in the night. 

“Well, yes...but I'm glad you came,” Catherine said. And it was true; Father might have little patience for the old sorceress, but Catherine knew Vincent counted her as a dear friend. 

Narcissa sat down in Vincent's old carved chair, her bangles and beads jangling against the wood. “I come because you want to know where he is.”

Catherine's eyes widened. How had she known? “Yes. I'm worried for him.” And that was nothing more or less than the simple truth. During the day, she could be positive and strong for his family and friends, but at night, the ever-present sense in their bond that Vincent was on some unfathomable mental journey made her fear for him. What if he wandered so far that he couldn't return? 

“He needs you, like birds need air and fish need water. He will return, child,” Narcissa said, her voice soft and soothing, nothing of the dotty old woman of Father's tales in her manner. “But his journey is not ended. He must face and defeat the Evil One before he can return.”

“Paracelsus is dead,” Catherine said, remembering the horror of the scene that night in Father's chambers, the body stretched out, disemboweled over Father's desk, a corner of his vile mask hanging slack from Paracelsus' chin. And Vincent himself, catatonic in his shock and grief. 

“His body, yes. Quite dead, thrown down the Abyss,” Narcissa said, a grim twist of satisfaction in her words. “But his evil lives on.”

Father would have scoffed, but Catherine was quite sure Narcissa knew the answer. “What can I do to help him?”

“You are his anchor, child. He'll need you to pull him from the darkness.”

“Vincent pulled me from death once using our bond,” Catherine said. “How am I to reach him, wherever he is? I haven't his abilities.”

Narcissa opened her hand. Lying on her palm, startling against her dark skin, were cowrie shells. “What do these look like to you?”

Catherine shivered at the brief memory of the nightmare of madness she'd endured at the hands of the voodoo cult, and Vincent's hand, crushing the shell and scattering it over the balcony wall, its power over her ended. “Shells,” Catherine said, shaking off the feeling. 

“So they are,” Narcissa said with a chuckle. “But in the hands of another, they can tell the future.” She placed the cowrie shells in a frayed fabric pouch at her waist. “People and things can exist on many levels. Your Vincent is here, but his mind is somewhere else.”

Catherine nodded. “I sense that through our bond.”

Narcissa smiled. “He chose well. It is good you know such things. You are his lodestone, the light he travels to in the darkness, but you are also here. When the time comes, child, you will have to meet him on his level to bring him home. And then you will know how.”

Three years ago, before meeting Vincent, Catherine would have disregarded the old woman's words as so much mumbo-jumbo, but experience---and a few encounters with Kristopher Gentian---had taught her that the world was not always as it seemed. “I understand,” she said, and Narcissa smiled a fond, knowing smile that told Catherine that perhaps she really did. Father might snort in derision of the very idea of multiple planes of existence, but she had the evidence of their bond, and she trusted the bond more. “Can you help us?” Catherine asked.

“What is to be, I cannot interfere with,” Narcissa said. “I once sent your Vincent to demand truth from a madman because I knew he would destroy the Evil One.”

Catherine gasped. Narcissa had known Paracelsus was below...and had done nothing, because it was Vincent's fate to destroy him? Just as she began to speak, Narcissa held up a hand. “Child, it was no easy thing. I have known your Vincent from a young child, when he would evade Father's attentions and visit me in my chamber. I was never a 'crazy old woman' to him. But I had seen what was to happen, and it was not my place to interfere. The Evil One, Father had tried to destroy and failed, too many times. The Evil One destroyed himself with his words, and that was meant to be.” Her head tilted and the sightless eyes darted towards the entrance. “The Father comes. Remember my words, Catherine. To save him will take everything. And you will know what must be done.”

She stood then, in a rattle of beads and bangles, and the slightly dotty aura that had been completely missing during their conversation came back just as Father's shadow crossed the threshold. “Ah, Catherine, I thought I heard voices...oh, hello, Narcissa. What brings you so far?”

Narcissa shook the bag of cowrie shells at her waist. “The shells told me I was to come.”

Catherine bent her head and smothered a grin at Father's chagrined expression. “The shells...I see,” Father said, though he clearly didn't. “Well...good. It's good to see you.”

“I must return. The spirits are calling me,” Narcissa said, and Catherine choked on a laugh. With her face still half-shadowed, Father couldn't possibly see Narcissa's roguish wink. And in a flutter of fabric, she was gone.

“Catherine, dear, you're coughing. Do you need anything?”

Catherine managed to shake her head. “No, Father. Just a...tickle in my throat.”

***

Vincent opened his eyes to the shadowed interior of Father's chamber. A faint sense of unease skittered through his awareness...something was wrong...something was very wrong.

“It's too clean,” the Other said. “Can't you smell it?”

Vincent inhaled, opening his mouth slightly. He smelled it then, the lingering scent of harsh cleaners rough on his throat and in his nose. And all of a sudden, he knew. “Oh, no, no, no....” he moaned, head in his hands. 

“Yes,” the Other said. “This is Father's chamber after we killed Paracelsus.”

Nausea twisted in his gut, the pain of the festering wound of memory biting into his heart. Vincent raised his head to stare at his dark twin. “I cannot relive this.”

“You may have to,” the Other replied, though not without compassion. “This is the cliff he pushed you over. You were meant to think you killed Father.”

“I thought I had, until he unmasked himself,” Vincent whispered. “I thought I had killed my own Father.”

“Did you really?” his twin asked. “How could you have? There were signs, Brother. Paracelsus was a good actor, true, but no one is that good. How could you really not know?”

That was something to consider. He had known, through Catherine, that Stephen Bass---a man he'd never met---was insane, but he'd not noticed the most obvious signs that it was not Father he'd killed. “I don't know how I missed it,” Vincent said, memory unwinding and time snapping back...

***  
 _Vincent had stalked into Father's chamber that night, reeling from the news that Paracelsus was his father, that Anna was his mother, that he was no abandoned child but just an orphaned one. But Paracelsus, of all people---Paracelsus, who'd killed Lou and tried to kill Narcissa, who'd killed 50 people above by selling his poison, who had once been Father's friend until some unknown tragedy had severed their relationship. Vincent had been conscious of a widening tremor deep inside himself from the moment he'd pushed aside the moss on Anna's tomb and the crevasse of horror, of shocked realization, of hurt and angered fury, showed no signs of narrowing. Why? Why had Father not simply told him? There were other orphaned children below and no one would have held the crimes of the father against the child. Why? Vincent asked that question in a thousand different forms growing up, but tonight, he meant to have an answer._

_He was peripherally aware of Catherine in the chamber, but for the first time since he'd met her, he was not as aware of her as he was of Father, garbed again in the clothes of below and looking for all the worlds like his life, at least, had not changed. “Anna...was John Pater's wife,” Vincent snarled._

_Catherine looked from him to Father, clearly more than a little nervous. Did she sense the widening chasm within him too? Vincent wondered. “I'll wait in your chamber,” she said. Vincent didn't respond as she left._

_Father had returned to his habitual seat behind his desk as Vincent stalked forward. “Is it true, then? Was Paracelsus...my father?” Even saying the words left a bitter nausea in his mouth. That he could have come from such a man, a man of such horrific deeds that even grown adults whispered his name with fear..._

_Father didn't respond. “What have you done?” Vincent asked._

_Incredibly, Father seemed completely insensate to Vincent's anguish and that rocked him further. Always before, he had reached out with a careful touch, a hug, or a kiss when Vincent had felt such pain, but now...it seemed he didn't want to touch him. Not at all._ Am I such a monster now, because my father was one? _Vincent wondered. And felt the inner chasm increase, cracking and splitting along the lines of Father's avoidance of touch._

_At length, Father spoke. “It was done out of love.”_

_That Father could claim that now, with thirty-odd years of misdirection and outright lying behind him, was utterly unsatisfying. “The greatest crimes,” Vincent spat, “are always committed in the name of love.”_

_Father didn't immediately respond to this either, and a faint sense of unease rose in Vincent's consciousness. Something was...off, just a shade wrong, and his mental sense of Father was not quite right either, but with the final unexplored truth of his origins hanging just outside his reach, he pushed the impressions aside and waited, impatiently. Father spoke then, looking out into the middle distance. “At the time, it seemed so obvious. But now... Dear God, sometimes I feel so lost--”_

_The words were bitter in Vincent's mouth. He felt lost? He? He had not just found out that his father was a ruthless murderer. When had this become all about_ Father's _pain? What about the people who had been harmed by his lies? “Tell me,” Vincent said, the steel under the words giving no doubt that it was no request, but a command._

_And so he did, a tale of a good woman killed by the succubus in her womb. Vincent had howled then, an agonized roar of pain and fury and shame that seemed to begin from deep within the chasm in his soul. And when the faint smell of sulfur and dampness reached his nose, perhaps the sulfur was from the fires of his own personal hell...and the moisture only the scent of his own tears._

***  
“I know how,” the Other said. “Paracelsus knew, had always known, that your one weakness---if you can call it that---was your curiosity to know, finally, how we came to be. And that was the weapon he used to nearly destroy us. There were plenty of signs that it wasn't really Father we spoke with---the smell of sulfur and dampness, his complete indifference to our pain, his slight stoop when he walked---but your pain and anger almost completely blocked our empathic sense of him. You did not know as you would have had you been fully in your right mind.” The Other narrowed his eyes and something feral and wild glinted darkly. “But I did. I knew it was Paracelsus. I'm the one who killed him, not you. And I'd do it again with a smile on my face.”

This was the side of the Other Vincent had feared for over twenty years; the killer, the avenger. “For words? Just words?”

“For those kind of words, yes,” the Other said, the feral light darkening the blue eyes. “They were weapons, as surely as any knife or gun.”

“I thought it was Father!” Vincent said, the words forced from him in a torrent. It was what he'd wanted to say all the long hours after he'd awakened, when both Catherine and Father had tried to convince him that he must have known it was Paracelsus all along. They didn't understand, they could not understand. He had killed a man wearing his father's face in cold blood, for no more than words. And he hadn't known it wasn't Father until Paracelsus had unmasked himself. 

“Some part of you knew,” his twin said, pacing the confines of the room. “I knew, and as we've both established, I'm you. You were angry with Father for keeping the 'truth' from you, but deep inside, you knew that monster wasn't Father, because I knew. Father may be a lot of things---and he has lied to us in the past---but he'd never say anything that vile.” The Other tilted his head. “And you'd not have believed any of it if Father had just told us the truth in the first place---told us about Anna, her death and why Paracelsus was really exiled. So don't go assuming Paracelsus' death is entirely your fault. Father left us vulnerable by not telling the full truth.”

Vincent nodded, turning the thought over in his mind. It was not a new idea; there had been inconsistencies in Father's stories of Paracelsus almost from the first time Vincent had heard the name. Father was capable of lying, of long-term misdirection; Devin was a prime example. “I wonder why he never told me the full truth,” Vincent said. 

The Other sighed. “He wanted always to protect us. And he also wanted to protect himself. But...you may just have to ask him to find out the real reason.”

Vincent nodded. “I killed a man in cold blood,” he said, feeling again the shattering horror when Paracelsus had unmasked himself. “Never mind that that man was Paracelsus. How do I forgive myself for that?”

“People die for less reason every day,” the Other said. “Good, decent people too. Paracelsus was none of these; he was more a monster than we ever thought of being. Call it self-defense if you must; you surely know that he'd not have stopped, not ever, if we hadn't acted.” 

Vincent was startled to feel his twin gather him close in a rough, brotherly hug. “Regret the necessity if you must, but don't regret the action. Paracelsus was as much a threat as ever and that threat is---mostly---ended.”

Vincent drew back. “Mostly?”

“His evil lives on, in your world and this one. To stop it...will require both of us, whole and healed.” The Other tilted his head in an oh-so-familiar gesture. “Can you handle that? Taking me in, accepting me as part of yourself that is necessary and needed?”

“You're me,” Vincent said, grinning and exposing all of his teeth. “How can I not?”


	10. Chapter Ten- Eternity in An Hour

Chapter 10: Eternity in an Hour

Catherine rolled over in her sleep, seeking the warmth of a furry body close to her own. She turned to nestle against him and realized he wasn't there. “Vincent?” she asked, alarmed. Since they'd brought him out of that cave, he'd never moved out of the bed, never so much as come fully awake. Where could he have gone?

“You look so lovely when you sleep,” a voice said from the doorway and she turned her head.

It was Vincent, except it wasn't. The light from the single candle normally glinted red-gold in his hair, but this Vincent's hair was black. Only the blue eyes, the blue of the summer skies he'd never seen, were the same. Catherine looked from the empty space next to her to the man standing in the chamber entrance. “Who are you?”

“I'm him. He's me. I'm what he calls 'the Other.'” The Other spread his hands and Catherine noticed the fur was darker. “It's complicated.”

Catherine tilted her head, studying him. She'd heard Vincent personify his darker self, the one he blamed for his killing rages, as “the Other,” but she'd never thought to see him standing before her. “It'd have to be,” she said. “So. You're him. Where is he...where is my Vincent?”

“Here,” the Other said. “Safe. But Catherine, we have to talk.”

“I’m not dreaming, am I?” she asked.

The Other smiled, and it was that smile, more than anything, that told Catherine she was dealing with someone almost completely unfamiliar. Her Vincent could and did smile, but rarely was he so relaxed. “You are, more or less. But so is Vincent. This is…the netherworld. The place between, if you will.”

“You’re not carrying a pocket watch, are you?” Catherine asked. 

The Other shook his head. “No. Nor am I about to announce that I’m late. This is all quite real, Catherine.”

She nodded. “All right. Where is he? What’s been going on?”

And as the Other began to speak, Catherine found herself fascinated by this other Vincent. He was no mindless being, no homicidal killer. As she watched his hands move as he talked, it occurred to her that this was a more emotionally naked version of her Vincent, without most of the insecurities and defenses that her Vincent had accrued over a lifetime. When he finished, there was silence for a time as Catherine processed all he had told her. “All that pain, all those years you were carrying that around, and I never knew.”

“I think you’ll find that much has changed, Catherine,” said a familiar voice and suddenly, there was her Vincent, bright and golden, emerging from the shadows next to his twin. She launched off the bed and threw herself into his arms. “Oh, god, I missed you. I thought you were---“

“Lost?” Vincent smiled down at her, and the smile was that of his darker twin’s, open and loving and joyful. “Not all who wander are lost, Catherine.” 

“Quoting Tolkien,” Catherine said through her tears. “Now I know you’ll be all right.” She turned her head, noticing that the Other had disappeared. “Where…what happened to your twin?”

“He’s…me, as I am him. We’ve accepted each other.” 

And that, Catherine knew, was no simple thing. For years, Father had referred to his son as if he were two different beings, the light and the dark, but it had taken illness and his breakdown for Vincent himself to truly accept the darker side of his own nature. “You’re healed and whole,” she said and Vincent nodded.

“Yes,” he replied, “perhaps for the first time since…well, I can’t remember. But yes, he is a part of me.” Vincent gazed down at her, blue gaze intent. “Are you…how do you feel about that?”

“It’s what I wished for you always, that you would accept yourself,” she replied. “You don’t have to be perfect or a paragon, you just have to be…you.”

Strong arms enfolded her and he breathed out once, the hair on her head ruffling. “I have been…incredibly stupid at times, Catherine. And I’m sorry for all the times I   
didn’t tell you what you mean to me, for all the times I shut you out. I love you. I need you.” And gently---ever so gently---Catherine felt his mouth touch hers.

When he finally released her, Catherine pushed her hair out of her face and grinned up at him. “Wow. Apology accepted.” 

Vincent laughed then, the soft breathy laugh she’d so rarely heard and it kindled her own. Finally, finally, he was whole. Sobering, Catherine sat down on the bed and leaned against him as he sat next to her. “Do you know what will happen next?”

“I believe some sort of test,” Vincent replied, gathering her close. “Catherine, the way before us is still uncertain, and given a choice, I would have---“

“Tried to protect me?” Catherine asked, smiling. “I know. But I’m here, now. You…the Other, I mean, he told me what you’ve been through so far. How much worse can it be?”

Vincent shook his head, blue eyes darkening. “Catherine. Paracelsus is here.”

“How can that be?” she asked. “He’s dead. Narcissa told me his body was thrown into the Abyss.”

“Was it?” Vincent asked. “I didn’t know. But nevertheless, his spirit is below. I can…sense him. He’s here. Somewhere. Waiting.” He tilted his head. “You met with Narcissa?”

Catherine nodded. “Just before I woke up here. Wherever here is. She came to warn me, I think, that your ordeal wasn’t over.”

“She’s right. I don’t think this is quite over yet,” Vincent replied. One corner of his mouth quirked in what she recognized as a wry smile. “Did Narcissa send Father’s blood pressure through the roof again?”

“Yes,” Catherine said, giggling helplessly. “I’m afraid she lost him when she told him the cowrie shells told her to come and visit me.” 

“It’s quite possible they did,” Vincent replied. “Narcissa’s ways of knowing are…unique to her. I’ve never known her to be wrong, though.” 

Light flickered in the doorway, and a woman with hawk's wings stepped through it. Catherine remembered the Other's recollections and knew instantly who the woman was. “Greetings, Ma'at,” Vincent said. 

Catherine felt the woman's golden eyes on her, studying her. “So. This is your chosen, Vincent?”

“She is,” Vincent said, pulling her close. 

“Then come,” Ma'at said, her feathers rustling slightly. “It begins.” She extended one large wing and with a slightly bemused look, Catherine followed Vincent to stand under it. There was a snap and the roll of thunder and time stopped.

***

They were in a dark room, clogged with shadows and sounds that echoed. “This is no place in the tunnels that I know of,” Vincent said, holding her hand. “I can see no exit. Or entrance.”

“Then how'd we get in here?” Catherine asked. She couldn't see a thing but she could feel Vincent's smile through their bond. 

“Ma’at,” Vincent said. “Who else?” He was standing close enough that the threads of his hair brushed her face. “You seem nervous, Catherine.”

“Oh, well, I can’t imagine why,” Catherine replied dryly. “In the last hour, I’ve encountered the Other and an Egyptian goddess and now I’m with you in a room we can’t leave. There’s nothing at all unusual about that.”

Vincent chuckled. “I didn’t say that,” he said. She felt one warm hand touch her cheek. “But please, try not to worry. We’re together.”

Catherine smiled. “That we are.” She nestled against him, feeling the reassurance of the strong slow beating of his heart. “I truly thought I’d lost you when I went into that cave.”

“I know,” Vincent said. “I’m sorry. I never wanted to make you afraid.”

“I’ve never been afraid of you, Vincent. Only for you. And…well, that’s the price you pay for loving someone. Besides, you’re worth it.” 

He didn’t protest, didn’t turn her words aside as he would have before. Vincent merely pulled her close and said against her hair, “Thank you.”

There was the creak of a door and a thin sliver of light and a dark figure stepped forward. Catherine felt the jolt of Vincent’s surprise through their bond in the instant before he spoke. “Phillip?” Vincent stammered, sounding as thoroughly stunned as she’d ever seen him. “Is it really you?”

“My ghost, but yeah, man, it’s me,” Phillip said. 

“What are you doing here?” Vincent asked. 

“’All the world is a stage,’” Phillip said. “Isn’t that Shakespeare’s line? Well, my role is to take you on your next journey through our little drama.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, Paracelsus isn’t much of a script-writer.”

“He holds you captive?” Vincent said.

“Yes…and no,” Phillip said. “I’m nearly 20 years dead, Vincent, and my spirit has long since gone on to… well, you’ll find out one day, but not today.” There was a flash of a smile and Catherine felt Vincent relax just a bit. “But I’m here because your memory of me held you captive…and Paracelsus would like to see you stay ‘bound by chains you forged in life.’ He’s evil, man.”

All of a sudden, Phillip noticed Catherine. “I’m sorry. You must be the lovely lady I kept telling Vincent he’d find one day. Nice to meet you.”

It felt odd to be shaking hands with a ghost, but she’d drunk cappuccino with Kristopher Gentian. After that weirdness, nothing else quite compared. “Nice to meet you too,” Catherine replied, releasing his hand, startled to find it was warm. 

“So you're a memory?” Vincent asked. “My memory of you?”

“Pretty much,” Phillip said. He looked Vincent up and down. “Paracelsus thought you'd feel more guilty, more ashamed. I'm glad to see you don't.”

“I had some...help...seeing that I couldn't have prevented your death,” Vincent said.

Phillip laughed. “Yeah, that Other of yours, he don't mince words much.”

“I've noticed,” Vincent said dryly. “It's not a bad talent to have.”

“No,” Phillip replied, smiling, “that it isn't.” He paused, as if listening to some inward voice. “That Ma'at, she don't say much but you get her point just the same...anyways, I'm to tell you what's to happen next. You will meet some people along the way and there will be things you must do for them---or to them----to finish your task.” He folded his arms. “Now, this is just me telling you this, not Ma'at. You have to destroy Paracelsus. You have to get his heart up on that scale of Ma'at's. You understand me?”

Vincent nodded, and Catherine wondered at the sense of calm purpose she felt through their bond, at the measured, leashed power that had settled over him like a cloak. She had known there would be changes when Vincent finally made peace with himself, but she had not expected this serenity. “I understand,” Vincent replied. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

Phillip smiled. “Only this: no matter what, I never blamed you. You were my friend and I was proud to go out defending my home. Just so we part with that straight.”

“You're leaving?” Vincent asked.

“I'm a memory, Vincent. I've never truly left you, have I?”

“No,” Vincent said. “I never forgot you.”

“So you know I can't be gone, not really.” Phillip glanced towards the door, which had once again appeared. “That's all I can say, man. Just...don't forget what I told you, okay?”

“I won't,” Vincent replied, and he and Catherine watched as Phillip left and the door disappeared, leaving them in darkness. 

“Now we wait, I guess,” Catherine said, sitting down on the floor and crossing her legs underneath her, drawing Vincent down to sit beside her. She tilted her head seeing his vague outline in the darkness. “You've changed.” 

She couldn't see Vincent's smile, but Catherine felt its warmth through their bond. “I've had to, Catherine. Does it surprise you?”

“A little,” Catherine replied, smiling in return. “When Phillip mentioned destroying Paracelsus...you accepted it. Like a warrior.”

“I am,” Vincent said, and the growl riding under his words was unmistakeable. “I will not let Paracelsus accomplish in death what he could not in life. It's not my fate to be a protector, Catherine. It's my choice.”

Catherine nodded, remembering his anguished, guilt-ridden torment after the Outsiders, after the times he'd killed to protect her, his fears of his other, hidden nature overpowering. “You feared the Other. And now you don't?”

“I don't,” Vincent agreed. “Catherine, you must understand this. I don't like the times I've had to kill. I would prefer to do it much less, but I don't regret what I've done. I saved your life, and the lives of people below, because I was able to defend you all.” His hands, strong and warm, cupped her face, the claws gentle against her skin. “How can I regret the outcome?”


	11. Chapter Eleven- When the Evening Falls

Chapter 11: When the Evening Falls

Vincent found himself in Central Park with Catherine by his side, under a full moon. He breathed out once, relieved; his greatest fear, once he was reunited with her, was that they would be separated as part of Paracelsus' plan. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Catherine dusted off the knees of her jeans. “Yes. A little startled, though...Vincent, does this happen often here?”

Vincent couldn't repress a quick grin. “What, popping in and out of places without warning? Yes. Frequently.” 

She looked up at him. “You don't seem...bothered.”

Strangely, he wasn't. Before accepting the Other, he would have been petrified that some occurrence would cause his inner beast to surface, but now... _See, I told you this would be easier on you,_ the mental presence he recognized as the Other said.

_You were right,_ Vincent agreed. 

_Don't get too cocky, though,_ the Other said. _When Paracelsus calls the shots, you know things get ugly._

_I do,_ Vincent said. _But he didn't expect that I would accept you._

_No, the Other replied,_ and gave him a mental shove. _Catherine's waiting for a response, you dolt._

“I'm sorry,” Vincent said aloud. “I was....”

“A bit preoccupied?” Catherine said in her gentle, amused way. “I'm not surprised. This has been quite a journey for you, hasn't it?”

“Yes,” Vincent said. 

She took his hands in her own, the hands she had long ago claimed as hers, and he marveled again at her courage. “Vincent...no matter what...you'll still be you. And I'll love you, no matter what.” 

“It was never you I doubted,” Vincent replied. “Only myself.”

“But not as much anymore,” Catherine said, smiling. “I can tell. You don't seem as burdened.” 

“No,” he replied, not realizing how right she was until he'd said the words. The constant strain, the fear and worry, were largely gone. “I'm as surprised by it as you are.”

“I'm not all that surprised,” she replied, tugging him towards their favorite wooded path. “Looking back, I know this struggle has been a long time coming. Something had to give.” She bit her lip. “I always thought if you were really in trouble, I would sense it through our bond, like I did when you and Father were caught in that cave in. But I had no idea you were in such pain.”

Vincent stopped her. Moonlight glinted silver in her hair through the tree branches. “Catherine. There was nothing you could have done to prevent this.”

“Oh, wasn't there?” Catherine said. “I should have realized what protecting me was doing to you.” 

“It was my choice,” Vincent said. 

“I know. But I could have done something to reduce the risk that you'd have to kill.”

“Did you go into danger deliberately, Catherine?” 

“No, of course not,” she replied, her horror at the thought echoing through their bond. 

“Then why do you assume you could have prevented this? When I had to kill to protect you, it wasn't your doing. Even that night when I was caught above...it was my choice to watch over you and my choice to try and rescue that man.” Vincent drew her close, for the first time fully acknowledging how much he loved the feel of her body against his. “We are what we are, Catherine. And my choice, always and forever, has been to protect you.”

“But at such a cost? Vincent, you were being torn apart!”

Vincent rested his cheek against the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair. “Yes, I was, Catherine, but that process began long before I ever met you.” He drew back a little to gaze at her. “Did Father tell you of my illness after Lisa?”

Catherine nodded. Vincent continued, “That was when I became convinced I'd have to cage the Other. I believed he'd hurt Lisa and would harm anyone else I loved. I feared him, but when I had to kill---to protect the tunnels, to protect you---I had to draw on what I perceived as his strength, his instincts. And the more I did it, the more the wall between us fell. And the more I hated myself.”

She was silent for a time, absently playing with the fringe on his cloak. There was nothing coming through their bond but the quick running river of her thoughts and Vincent pulled back a bit mentally, allowing her privacy. At length, Catherine spoke. “I sensed that, when I was going to see you in that cave. Our bond was flooded with your self-loathing, with your pain and anguish. It...hurt, Vincent. Don't you know how much you're loved? Didn't you know that then?”

_How do I explain this to her?_ Vincent wondered.

_You're doing fine,_ the Other said. _This isn't easy to say, but she needs to know this._

“I knew,” Vincent said aloud. He remembered the picture the Other had drawn beside Winslow's cairn and releasing her and kneeling, he drew the same one on the ground. “I felt like my family loved this part of me,” he said, gesturing to one side of the square. “This was what they wanted to see---their teacher, the scholar, the guardian. This other side...it terrified them. And I couldn't blame them, when it horrified me to know such a creature lived inside me.” Vincent paused. “I've always had to hide among them, to be what they expected of me…only that and nothing more. I tamed my steps so they couldn't see how fast I could run, hid that I could hear or see or smell better than they could and hoped they'd never notice a monster lived inside me.”

“You're no monster,” Catherine said, fierce as always. 

Vincent smiled. “I know that, now. But it was easier to deny the Other’s existence than it was to try and understand him. Me.” He chuckled a bit ruefully. “We were never separate beings, but it was just easier to believe that we were…that I was…divided in two.”

He stood, and they began walking again towards the tunnel entrance as they had so many times before. “Of course it was easier,” Catherine said. “You were always so alone. Even Father couldn’t help you to understand.”

“It was hard for him too,” Vincent replied. “There was no manual for raising a child as different as I was. He did the best he could.”

“I know he did,” Catherine said. “But it’s no wonder you couldn’t accept yourself if pretty much everyone around you was ignoring your differences as if they were something to be ashamed of.”

Vincent stopped, rocked again by her acceptance of all that he was and wasn’t. “You never tried to make be anything other than what I am. How could you do that so easily?”

“Because I love you, Vincent.” She tugged on a lock of his hair that had fallen over his shoulder and her gamin smile was lovely. “Don’t overanalyze it. Just accept it.”

_She’s beautiful in the moonlight,_ the Other spoke up, jabbing him sharply in the ribs.

_I’ve noticed,_ Vincent replied. _But then,_ he thought, _she’d be beautiful in sackcloth and ashes._

_Then do something about it,_ the Other said. 

The heady nearness of her was like the fizzing bubbles he’d seen once in one of Mouse’s more dubious concoctions, all twisting and turning and fighting to escape to the surface. He fell into the joy of loving her, of being loved, and bent his mouth to touch hers. When finally they stepped apart, Catherine's delight echoing through their bond and the taste of her still on his lips, Vincent felt as if his heart would leap out of his chest for sheer happiness. 

Catherine smiled up at him. “You're getting...quite good at that.” 

He couldn't help it. He grinned back, showing all his fangs and for the first time, not worrying what it might look like. “I've been told that practice makes perfect.”

She laughed and they began to walk again. A light breeze was blowing and just as the wind began to turn, Vincent smelled it---a familiar scent that had been as common in his boyhood as Father's _tea-disinfectant-old book_ smell. “I don't believe it,” he muttered. 

He knelt behind a sheltering bush and tugged Catherine down beside him. “What is it?” she asked.

Vincent gestured towards the figures at the mouth of the tunnel opening. “Watch.”

Two boys, one younger, one older, were standing in the shadows. “It's Devin,” Catherine said, amazed as the moonlight lit his features. “And is that...?”

“Me. Yes,” Vincent replied. “This is the first time I saw the moon, Catherine.”

***

_“Come out a bit further, Fuzz,” Devin said.  
“What if Father finds out?” Vincent asked. He was six years old and convinced that Devin could do anything...but he'd also seen how Devin and Father fought._

_“He won't. He's asleep. Winslow pulled sentry duty for this, so he's covering for us. Now come on.” Devin stepped out of the shadows into the full light of the moon and hesitantly, Vincent followed._

_“Look up, Fuzz,” Devin cajoled, holding onto Vincent's hand tightly._

_Vincent tilted his head up to look, and the hood of the concealing cloak fell back. “Devin, it's so big!”_

_And it was---a huge silver orb that seemed to take up half the sky. It was close enough to touch, but when Vincent reached up his hands, it was still too far away. “Can I hold it?”_

_Devin laughed, ruffling his hair. He was nine and very proud that he'd been able to sneak them both out after curfew. “You can't hold the moon, Fuzz,” he laughed. “But you can see it better if we get closer.”_

_His fear of being outside, of being seen, forgotten, Vincent followed Devin out further, bare-headed under the moon._

***

“You thought you could hold the moon?” Catherine asked. 

Vincent chuckled. “I was six. I didn't make sense until I was oh, seven or so.” 

She laughed and leaned against him. “I'm glad I got to see this.” Catherine paused. “Vincent, why are we seeing this?”

“Things do not happen here without reason,” Vincent replied. “If we are reliving this experience, it's because there is some larger point that Paracelsus---or his spirit---wants to make.”

“Do you know what it is?” Catherine asked.

“I have a theory,” Vincent replied. “If this memory ends where I expect, then I'll know if I'm correct.” 

***  
 _Vincent walked further, Devin holding his hand. He scrambled through trees and branches and the moon was large and bright above him. “Hey, Fuzz, don’t go too close to the road,” Devin said, but Vincent didn’t hear him._

_It wasn’t until his feet touched the strange firmness of asphalt that Vincent realized he was nearly out of the sheltering branches. A car passed by and the driver slowed, perhaps thinking they were preparing to cross the street. It was then that he saw the little girl’s face in the back seat of the car, her face as clear as his own must be, under the light of the moon. Her eyes were large with wonder and what he thought was terror and as Vincent stood frozen, unable to move, her face crumpled and she began to cry. The pain of that was icy needles in his heart as the car passed them._

_Devin tugged on his hand. “Come on, Fuzz,” he said. “It’s time to go home.”_

_Vincent swiped at his tears with the back of his hand. “I’m never coming back here, Dev. Not ever.”_

_Devin seemed a loss for words. “Sure, Fuzz. Whatever you want.” Whatever else he might have said was lost in the rush of air as Vincent ran home, sobbing._

***  
The scene stilled and froze before them. Vincent stared off into the night, surprised at the power this memory still held over him, nearly thirty years later.

_Why are you surprised?_ the Other asked. _This was when we first realized that being different meant we could scare people. And it hurt. It still does._

“Vincent,” Catherine said, breaking into his ruminations. “I don't think she was scared.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

She opened her mouth to reply but the sudden chill of a wind that hadn't been there before brought him up short, a frisson that skittered across his soul. _Remember Narcissa's warning,_ the Other said. _“ Some who walk in death are fearful. Cold. Bitter as the wind that roars up from the Abyss. Evil.” It was the last of the things she said to us before we pushed aside the moss on Anna's tomb. Narcissa knew more than we realized. She knew who the real monster was._

A figure was materializing out of the shadows, a creature of night and a cold gnawing evil that Vincent had only sensed from one person before. There was nothing human about that figure, not anymore; it had no eyes or face or distinguishing features, nothing except its evil. And it _wanted._

Vincent drew Catherine close as they stood. “Paracelsus,” Vincent snarled. 

The creature had no mouth, but the words it uttered were in Paracelsus' voice, those cultured tones that once must have made he and Father sound very much alike. “Vincent. How do you like our little theater?”

“As productions go, I've seen better,” Vincent said. Once before Paracelsus had found his weakest point; he would not yield the advantage again. “What’s this all about?”

“Surely you know,” the darkness said. “This was when you began to see yourself for who you really are. A monster, despite what Jacob would have you believe.” 

Catherine’s hand tightened on his own and Vincent had to wonder at her composure. She, too, had been harmed by Paracelsus, yet she faced his spirit---or whatever this was---without any outward signs of fear. “I only see one monster here,” she said. 

“Ah, how touching,” the creature sneered. “She defends you even though she’s seen what you’re capable of doing. Is she perhaps….excited by the danger?”

_That rotten, foul_ …Catherine’s thoughts were as loud in their bond as if she had been shouting. Taking advantage of his rare ability to actually hear her thoughts, Vincent sent back. _Catherine. Don’t. What we are, he could never understand._

She was startled at his voice in her mind but the firestorm of her fury simmered down just a bit. _You know it’s not true._

_It was never a question,_ Vincent thought back to her. _Not once. Not ever._

Her mental smile was dazzling. _Good. But I still want to throttle him._

_Stand in line,_ Vincent growled, and Catherine tightened her hold on his hand, anchoring him. “What do you want?” he ground out.

“You were my son first. You were mine,” the apparition said. “Jacob may have trained you to be human but only I can show you what you truly are. I am your mirror.”

“You are not,” Vincent said, fighting the urge to strike at this shade. “I know who I am. I am not…will not…ever be yours.” 

“Ah, I recognize Jacob’s arrogance. He has taught you well.” 

The faint smell of smoke and sulfur was all the warning they received as the night dissolved around them.


	12. Chapter Twelve- At the Crossroads I Am Standing

Chapter 12: At the Crossroads I Am Standing

Given Paracelsus' penchant for overly dramatic scenes, Catherine knew she shouldn't have been surprised at her location. This place had appeared in a good many of her nightmares and---she suspected---quite a few of Vincent's as well. She stood as the smell of sulfur and the heat curled over her in a wave. “Vincent?” she called.

“Up here,” he said from the plinth above her. He reached down and lifted her up. “You're not hurt?” Vincent asked, settling her next to him. 

“No, but I sure am glad to see you.” Vincent had taken off his cloak, she was glad to see, though he was still greatly overdressed for this heat. “How are you doing?”  
Vincent rubbed his right kneecap. It was the same one, Catherine remembered, that had been injured when he'd been trapped above a few years back. She'd wondered many times if those old injuries still pained him, but with his characteristic reticence, he'd never quite given her an answer. “I hit the ground wrong,” Vincent said, noticing her gaze. “Don't worry.”

She nodded, knowing she had to control her fear as she'd done once before in this place. “Vincent, what was that thing?”

“Paracelsus,” Vincent said. “As he is now...though I think he was always like that, and what we saw when he was alive was merely a shell. Evil...devours all good, eventually.” His mouth quirked. “Marley's chains were not literal ones, but the chains of his actions forged while he was alive. I'd say Dickens wasn't wrong.”

“No,” Catherine replied, remembering the apparition they'd so recently seen, the grasping, bottomless _want_ she'd sensed. 

There were no shadows in this place, no places to hide and yet, the apparition's appearance startled them both. “You've arrived for Act One of our production,” it said. “And in seats in the Mezzanine. That will not do, not at all.”

And with a muted snap, they were on the ground, level with the dark form of the apparition. Now that Catherine could see it clearly, she noted how the light illuminated nothing of its form. It was vaguely human-shaped, but there all resemblance ended. “Surely you remember how our little play began,” it said. 

“I remember,” Vincent snarled and Catherine cast a quick glance at him in concern and understanding. She could feel the hate and anger running through him and knew that Winslow's death and her own near-immolation must be in the forefront of his mind again. Then she watched as his expression changed, as he fought back the rage and assumed a pose of calm. He’s channeling the anger until he can unleash it, Catherine realized. The changes in his expression were minute, and probably too subtle for Paracelsus to notice, but they were telling of all that Vincent had learned since accepting the Other. 

He wasn't afraid of himself, not anymore. Catherine touched his hand lightly by way of reassurance and his eyes smiled a bit, then returned to gaze at Paracelsus. “What do you want?” Catherine asked, feeling the coiled strength in Vincent’s hands. 

“In the last scene of our play, Vincent fought to rescue the fair maiden. Perhaps I might have done better in casting the role where you’re concerned since you're no maiden,” the apparition said, with what was unmistakably a snide leer despite the lack of both eyes and a face, “but no matter. You then returned above, believing it was all over. How touching.” 

The creature turned its gaze to Vincent. “Did you ever tell her?”

Catherine felt a wash of feeling through their bond—guilt, anguish, fear. She’d long suspected that at least some of the pain he’d felt from this night had to do with how the giant, Erlick, had died. “I see you didn’t,” the apparition continued. “No matter. Tonight, in the last act of our production, she’ll see what you are."

She lifted her chin. “I’ve always known what he is.”

“Ah, yes, the Beast, from which fair Beauty shall rescue him with a kiss. Is that how the story goes?” 

“It's your play,” Catherine said, not wanting to try and explain anything about their relationship to this creature. “Why don't you tell us?”

“Oh, I shall, my dear,” it crooned. “I shall.”

***  
Vincent watched as the scene unfolded, the giant Erlick and himself, battling in the final act of a production without reason. He'd seen it a thousand times in nightmares which still occasionally woke him with the taste of the giant's blood in his mouth and the inner painful tightening of his ribs as the giant's arms pinned his own.   
“Catherine, I---” he began, but the creature cut him short. 

“No talking in the theater,” it said, and Vincent had to settle for a warning growl at the apparition as he watched himself and Erlick battle once again. 

Erlick had been near to his own strength, Vincent remembered, and that had been shocking enough, but the fear that Catherine would die before he could defeat Erlick had increased his desperation ten-fold. He had not been able to free his hands and when the giant's neck had come within reach, it had seemed the quickest route to ending their battle. His fangs had torn the giant's throat open and he'd nearly choked on the hot welter of the giant's blood. 

Catherine's emotions through their bond were an instant soothing balm. He remembered, in a haze of fever and despair, telling her, “Whatever happens, whatever comes, know that I love you.” What a wonder she was. She...accepted everything. What Vincent sensed through their bond was not horror or shame or pity, but a sorrow that seemed to fill the world, and sadness that he'd not only had to experience this the first time but was being forced to relive it again. 

The scene should have ended as it had before: Vincent spitting out the worst of the blood and wiping his mouth before jumping up to free Catherine from her prison of flame, but this time, it ended in a way it hadn't before. The other Vincent roared his victory, and turned to face Catherine with blood dripping from his mouth....  
And that Catherine screamed in terror at the beast in front of her. 

“That's not what happened,” Catherine said, firm and resolute as always. 

“Ah, but it could have,” the apparition said, taunting. “You felt it, did you not, Vincent? The sweet triumph of victory over your enemy, the taste of blood like copper and fire on your tongue.”

“Enough,” Vincent snarled. The true horror roiled in his stomach: it could have happened this way, because he had felt triumph in Erlick's death---shamed triumph, to be sure, but a triumph nonetheless. Perhaps that was the greatest of the horrors from that night. _No,_ he mused, _it shows only my greatest fear: that she would leave me because of what a part of me is._

Catherine's gaze, clear and steady and loving, calmed him. “What is your point, Paracelsus?” Vincent said, gathering the rage back into himself. 

“I should think it would be obvious,” the apparition said. “But since life with Father has apparently dulled your thinking, I'll make it clear. The woman loves only a part of you. She doesn't know the beast and would be revolted by it if she did.”

“Is that the best you can come up with?” Vincent asked, feeling the inner quake of derisive laughter threatening to explode. 

_Now you get it,_ the Other said, chuckling. _Paracelsus as boogeyman is much less fearful when he comes up with inane scenarios like this._

“Catherine loves me,” Vincent said, feeling the stunning freedom of accepting her love, of being able to say the words out loud. “This...scene you've created. It's not real.”

“Don't be so sure,” the creature snarled, and the dark resonance of its endless hate rolled out to cover them both.

***

“Vincent?” Catherine whispered. They were once again in the walled room where they'd encountered Phillip and Ma'at. At least, that was where she thought they were; without light or distinctive sounds, it was impossible to be sure. 

“I'm here,” he replied. 

His voice sounded strained, Catherine thought...strained and weary beyond belief. “Are you all right?”

Vincent breathed out once, a short sharp breath that she'd heard before, when he was in pain. “My ribs hurt,” he said, sounding more than a bit perplexed. “Catherine, the last time they hurt like this was....”

“The Silks,” Catherine said, feeling the harsh taste of that failure in her mouth again. Her fault, no matter what anyone had said before or since. Hers. Only hers. “But how can that be? Your injuries healed years ago.”

She could almost hear him smile. “We've encountered an Egyptian goddess, not only one but two ghosts, and you ask how this could happen?”

Catherine nodded, though she wasn't sure if even his night vision could see her. “Right.” She scrambled over to the location of his voice and recoiled when she collided with something hard. “Ouch,” she said, rubbing her head. “Did I hurt you?”

“I should be asking you that,” Vincent said. “My head is hard, or so Father tells me.” 

That he could make a joke, even in the middle of all the uncertainty and the new mystery of his returning injuries made her chuckle, just a bit. “I could have told you that years ago,” she said. “So, let's see. Does your right knee still ache?”

“Yes,” Vincent said. “And my ribs on my left side.”

“From where you were hit by the car,” Catherine said, the grim catalog of wounds making a sort of sadistic sense. _Everything is a lesson here,_ she thought. _And with Paracelsus as the teacher this time..._

“You're worried,” Vincent said. “Why?”

She snorted. “You have to ask?”

“I'll rephrase the question, Counselor,” Vincent said dryly. “What bothers you right now?”

Catherine bit her lip, the nebulous threads of a theory beginning to take shape. “Paracelsus seems hell bent on trying to convince you that you're really just a monster. And now your injuries from the time you were trapped above have begun to return.”

“So if he can't convince me that I'm a monster, maybe he can convince me that you're dangerous for me? That I shouldn't love you?” Vincent asked.

Put like that, it did make sense. “Divide and conquer does seem to be the way Paracelsus does things,” Catherine replied. 

“It's a chess master's strategy,” Vincent agreed, the light rasp of his clothing shifting against the rock loud in the silence. He reached up to touch her face, those dangerous, lethal claws so gentle against her skin. “And it's also greatly flawed. Nothing and no one can divide us, Catherine. You are mine as I am yours.”

“Yes,” Catherine said, and kissed him. 

***

For a time, the only sound was their breathing, Vincent's a bit shallower than usual. Catherine remembered something she'd been about to say before Paracelsus' apparition had shown up. “Vincent, that girl in the park? I don't think she was scared.”

“She was crying, Catherine,” Vincent replied, a ghost of an old and ragged pain riding just under his words. 

“Maybe she was crying because she wanted to stay.”

“Stay...with me?” The doubt in Vincent's voice was clear and it wrung her heart.

“I think you must have been magical, even then.” She felt for his free hand in the darkness; the other, she knew, was bracing his ribs. “The children below, do they run from you? Have they ever run from you?” 

“No,” he admitted, and Catherine felt his astonishment at the realization. 

“Then think about it. If those children---who have been abandoned or seen things that no child should ever see—weren't frightened of you, maybe that little girl wasn't either.”

He was silent for a time, mulling that over. “I never thought...” Vincent said. 

“Of course you didn't. You've never seen yourself as beautiful as the rest of us do.” 

Vincent breathed out, and the image of a mirror flashed through their bond. A mirror? Catherine wondered. “No, I never have,” he replied. “But I'm trying to...accept myself more.”

Catherine smiled. “I know you are. Believe me, Vincent. You never have been 'disgraced in my eyes.' Far from it.” 

Gingerly, Vincent pulled her closer. “I've been...trying to you at times, haven't I?” 

Catherine laughed. “Oh, just a bit. But you were—and are---worth it.” Unexpectedly, she yawned, her fatigue suddenly heavy on her shoulders.. 

“Rest now,” Vincent said. “I'm sure we'll need our rest to deal with whatever's coming next.”

“Vincent, isn't this whole thing taking place while we're asleep?” she wondered. 

“I believe so,” he said, “but wherever we are, whatever is really going on...we'll need our rest.” 

“That's right,” said a voice out of the darkness. “I always told you, when in doubt, sleep. Good to know you listened.”

They both knew that voice. “Winslow?”


	13. Chapter Thirteen- When the Night Climbs Slow

Chapter 13: When the Night Climbs Slow

“It’s me,” Winslow said, his big booming voice as distinctive as the winds of the Abyss. “It’s too dark in here. The bird lady forgets that just because she can see in the dark doesn’t mean everyone else can.” The shadows in the room dissolved under the returning light. “That’s better,” Winslow said, sitting with unexpected grace on the floor. “I’m sure you want to know why I’m here,” he continued.

“I do,” Vincent said. “Are you…well?”

“That ain’t what you want to know, Vincent. You want to know if I’m a ghost or if I’m real or some conjuring of Paracelsus. Ain’t that so?”

Vincent nodded. “I’m not real, not as you understand it. More than that is Narcissa's thing, not mine,” Winslow continued. “And I’m no ghost that Paracelsus conjured up. The bird lady—Ma’at---she asked me to come, me and Phillip.” Winslow flashed a grin. “And I thought you looked strange.”

Vincent smiled in return, remembering. It was the quick, indiscriminate teasing he’d missed most, along with Winslow’s friendship. “So I do,” he said, chuckling a bit and wincing as the movement jostled his ribs. “Why are you here?” 

“Paracelsus,” Winslow spat, with the all the venom of a long-time tunnel dweller, “he gets to write the script but he can’t cast the actors. Ma’at sent me because she figured we had a score to settle, you and I, and it’s something she’d rather we handle before Paracelsus gets the chance to write his next scene and tries to use it against you..”

Vincent tilted his head. “I’m not angry with you, Winslow.”

“I know you’re not, but I did wrong by you. I never got the chance to tell you how sorry I was…so, I’m getting that chance, if you’ll let me.” Winslow tensed slightly and his gaze grew distant. “The bird lady says I'm to let you rest first. I'll keep watch, don't you worry. You're in no shape to watch over yourself, let alone the both of you.”

“Thank you, Winslow,” Catherine said. “It's...good to see you again. I wish I'd known you better before...well...”

Winslow smiled. “I knew when I went that I might not come back. It was worth going, for what I went for. Rest now. Paracelsus won't disturb you while I'm here.” He handed Vincent his cloak. “Thought you might need this.” 

Catherine fell asleep almost instantly as the cloak settled around her. “I didn't mean just she should sleep,” Winslow said. “Rest. You'll be awake soon enough.”

A thought tugged at him, breaking through several layers of fatigue and the pain in his ribs and knee. “So Ma'at...is helping us?”

“Not precisely,” Winslow said. “More like she's trying to keep things even on your journey. Paracelsus, he takes advantage, but Ma'at wants things fair and decent.”

Vincent nodded. “Phillip said I'd have to destroy Paracelsus.”

Winslow nodded. “I don't see any way around it myself. Only way to make sure he stays gone this time.” He shifted, grunted a little. “This sitting on rock floors is for younger types. Sleep, will you? I don't have all night.” 

Almost against his will, Vincent felt his eyes closing. Shifting to rest his ribs more comfortably, he fell asleep under Winslow's watchful gaze.

***

_“I can't wake her. Either of them, really. ”_

_“Since when?”_

_“Since breakfast, at least. Mary came to relieve Catherine and called me when she didn't respond. I don't understand it. She was fine last night. Peter, what can we do?”_

_An old woman's voice, the crone, the voice of age and eternity and wisdom. “She is where she needs to be. Let them both rest. It's not yet time.”_

***

He awoke to the firm touch of Winslow's hand on his shoulder. “It's time,” Winslow said. 

Catherine stirred beside him, the scent, the warmth of her an anchor of reality in a place so profoundly unreal. “How long were we asleep?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Long enough,” Winslow said. “You know, time don't work the same here as it does elsewhere.” 

“So I've gathered,” Catherine replied, smiling. “Thank you for keeping watch.”

Winslow sketched a sloppy salute, grinning. “All part of our friendly service here in Elysium.” 

Vincent shifted as Catherine sat up. The movement sent an arc of pain through his ribs that left him gasping. He felt Winslow's strong hands help him into a more upright position. “You're hurt,” Winslow said. “Paracelsus?”

He nodded. “One of his...lessons,” Vincent replied. “I'm supposed to conclude that Catherine is dangerous for me to love.”

Winslow chuckled. “Paracelsus ain't that bright, is he?” His dark gaze grew distant, seeing into a different time. “Of course, neither was I, once.”

Vincent knew what Winslow was talking about; Catherine, bemused, did not. “Winslow,” he said. “It's over. I forgave our...argument...long ago.”

“Sure you did. 'Cause that's you. Even that damn fool Cullen, you could forgive when all of us wanted to take him out behind the woodshed for what he'd done to Mouse, what he'd said to you. But some of us ain't the forgetting or forgiving sort.”

Vincent touched him on the arm. “You were always too hard on yourself.”

Winslow chuckled, but there was a dry rasp of old pain under his words. “Pot, meet kettle.”

Catherine looked from one to the other. “I don't understand.”

Winslow sighed. “You will.”

The world dissolved before them.

***

_It was late fall, Vincent remembered, on the rare occasions when he thought of their disagreement, just a day after he'd gone above and saved Catherine for the first time. He'd expected that his journey above would cause little comment, and it hadn't---save for Father---and he'd cherished some hope that the details of Catherine's rescue from Belmont's men would remain a secret from the larger community. Having been the subject of gossip before, in the dark days after Lisa left, he had no desire to repeat the experience._

_The following morning, he'd made the long trip to Winslow's forge to help him repair an old iron gate. Winslow had taught him metal-working as a teenager, in the long, anguished months after his recovery from his illness. There were no pipes that far down, no chattering gossip to reach them, and Vincent had often wondered if that had played some role in Father's decision to send him to Winslow for training._

_Winslow was already stripped down to his customary forging garb---thin shirt, heavy jeans and a scarred leather apron over it all. Vincent removed three of his outer layers and tucked the thick bulk of his hair down the back of his shirt collar; he'd learned, through painful experience, that long hair and sparks from the forge did not mix. He was reaching for the other leather apron and trying to decide whether to roll up his shirt sleeves when Winslow's voice stopped him. “We got to talk.”_

_Vincent turned to see Winslow standing with his hands on his hips. The coals in the furnace were already glowing red, but no hotter than the force of his anger. “What is it, Winslow?” he asked calmly. He'd had long experience with the other man's temper; it was always something to be viewed with respect._

_“I hear you saved that topsider last night,” Winslow said._

_For a blank moment, Vincent wondered who “that topsider” was. To him, she was just...Catherine. “Yes,” Vincent replied, realizing that the sentries would have seen them both come below and that his own appearance---soaked in blood---must have been telling._

_“When you gonna learn, Vincent? Women from up there, they only cause trouble.”_

_So, it was true, then, Vincent thought. He'd heard rumors, but Winslow had been keeping largely to himself and he'd been unable to find out if Mouse's description of “a big fight” between Winslow and Helen was true. “Helen left you?” Vincent asked, feeling the force of Winslow's dark, ragged pain shuddering in the air between them._

_Winslow's large fist slammed down on the wooden workbench, rattling the tools ominously. “This ain't about Helen and me, Vincent! You saved her last night. You killed for her. Don't you think that's gonna bring trouble to our door?”_

_“She was being attacked, Winslow.” He spread his hands, the claws glinting in the red light from the forge. “What would you have had me do?”_

_“I'd have had you leave her be! She belongs in her world...and nothing you do for her is gonna change that, you damned fool!”_

_Vincent thought of the bond that had knit their souls together even as he'd tried so hard to ignore it over the eight months of their separation, and a dangerous anger began to grow. “You don't know anything,” he snarled back._

_“Don't I? Love ain't for the likes of us, Vincent.” His mouth twisted. “It's for poets and playwrights, but not for us.” All at once, his anger seemed to fold in on itself. “Yeah. Helen left me last week. Said she was tired of living this life, tired of me. I don't know any other life but this, Vincent. I don't know any other way to be. She needed...wanted...things I couldn't give her. So I let her go.” His eyes met Vincent's. “Just like you'll have to do for that topsider. You have to know that.”_

_He closed his eyes. The pain of that was too new---even as he acknowledged that the wise, safe thing to do was to let Catherine go, some ancient, primal part of him howled at the very idea. “I know.”_

***

“I was wrong,” Winslow said, looking at them both now. “I was wrong and a fool and I'm sorry.”

“Is that...why you came?” Catherine asked, wiping her face dry. 

“Yeah,” Winslow replied. “Once I saw you together, I knew. You can call it self-sacrifice if you want, say I died for my friends---and I did. But I also went because I knew you loved Vincent as much as he loved you. That's something I've...never known. And it was worth defending, worth protecting.” He smiled then, gentle and open as he'd rarely been in life. “And yes, even worth dying for.” 

Winslow stood then. “It's nearly time for me to go. I'll talk to Ma'at and see if she can prevent Paracelsus from hurting you further---last thing you need is to go blind now like you did then.” He walked towards the door, then stopped. “Just one thing, both of you. I don't regret my sacrifice. Don't you go regretting it either.” 

And with that, he was gone. 

***  
Catherine leaned against Vincent in the gathering dark. There was a rasp to his breathing she didn't like to hear. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

He coughed slightly and she winced at the pain she felt through their bond. “I've been better,” Vincent said.

She smiled at the dryness in his tone. “I bet you have. Are you injured anywhere else besides your knee and your ribs?” 

“No,” he said. “That's...interesting.”

Catherine nodded. “I know. I was expecting you to get a concussion next, or a broken arm or go blind or....” She felt her eyes fill again and blinked the tears away; they didn't have time for her guilt or pain now, not in this place where everything and nothing was real. 

She started when she felt the touch of a clawed hand on her shoulder. “Catherine. It was my choice to go above that night, to follow you.”

“I know,” she replied. “But it was my stupidity that got you nearly killed. I didn't have to go alone that night, Vincent. I could have asked for backup---Joe would have sent another investigator to go with me if I'd asked. But I was trying to prove myself, trying to prove I could handle the danger just like everyone else. And I caused you to be hurt. I'm never going to stop feeling terrible about that.” A dark thought occurred to her. “Do you think that's where we're going next?”

Vincent nodded. “Most likely. It would seem to prove Paracelsus' point nicely, though I don't believe he understands the rest of it.” 

The rest. That he had followed her above, gone into a burning building to rescue her informant, and been tortured and nearly killed by a vicious gang...all because he loved her and worried for her. No, Paracelsus would never understand that kind of love. “I don't ever want you to be in that kind of pain again, not ever,” Catherine whispered, clutching his hand where it rested on the stone floor. 

“I know. But...it's worth it, Catherine. No matter what, having you in my life has been all of my greatest joys.”

Just as she pressed her lips to his, a leering voice emerged from the shadows. “How touching. Fair Beauty kissing her Beast. Tell me, do you have to close your eyes so that you don't have to see the ugliness in front of you?”

There was no explaining that either, Catherine knew. No explaining that kissing Vincent was a joy in itself, no explaining that after Vincent, all other men looked too smooth, too ordinary, that while there had been others before Vincent, there could never be anyone after him. Vincent stared into her eyes and the love and passion in his eyes was more than enough to drench the anger she felt at the creature's words. “My eyes are open,” she replied, astonished at how level her voice was. “They always have been.”

“Ah, yes,” the creature crooned. “But what of the others he loves? His precious Father, for instance? Has he known what your love means for Vincent? The constant danger, the...injuries, the risk that his paradise will be discovered?”

And time as they knew it stopped.

***

_Catherine was sitting in the hospital chamber, drinking a cup of lemon tea gone long cold and watching as Father made hasty notes on an old clipboard. Vincent lay on a bed, his broad chest swathed in bandages, his broken arm set in plaster, the bruises and burns on his face startling against the white of the sheets. He might have looked to be sleeping comfortably, were it not for the harsh rasp of his breathing._

_The first time she'd heard it, she'd asked if he could be given something for the pain. Father had glared at her. “I don't want him to be in pain,” she'd said, flustered._

_“Then you shouldn't have taken him above!” he'd whispered, furious._

_“Stop it,” Mary had said, placing a restraining hand on his arm. “She didn't take him anywhere, Father, and you know it. Vincent left of his own accord. Don't beat the girl up just because you're furious at the people who really caused his injuries.”_

_He relented then and breathed out, once. “Right,” Father said. “I'm...sorry, Catherine. I can't give him any sort of strong pain medication; his system doesn't tolerate them well. The strongest thing I can give him is Tylenol and that won't be nearly enough.”_

_The clanking of the pipes, muted in the hospital chamber, brought conversation to a temporary standstill. “That'll be Darcy---I should go check on her,” Mary said, and left._

_“Chicken pox,” Father said by way of explanation. “Darcy and two of the other children.”_

_“Oh,” Catherine said. It seemed such a mundane illness in a world like this. “Will they be okay?”_

_Father nodded. “With Mary's help, yes. Vincent's never had it; for all I know, he might be immune.” He touched her arm. “We need to talk.”_

_She met his eyes. “I won't leave him.”_

_Father sighed. “I gave him a very mild sedative to help him sleep. He won't know you're there.”_

_“I'll know,” Catherine returned, folding her arms, bracing herself. If he banished her from the tunnels, she'd have considered it no more than her just due for what Vincent had endured on her behalf._

_“Very well, then,” Father replied, gesturing to a nearby alcove well within sight of the still figure on the bed. “I'm not here to fight with you, Catherine. For one thing, I don't have the time; Vincent's medical needs are critical and will remain so for some time. For another, I don't fool myself: you were the one thing that kept him going long enough to find his way home.” His grey falcon's eyes met hers. “And for that, I am thankful. He might have given up without knowing you were looking.” He touched her arm gently. “So...a truce? We can talk about what he was doing up there later.”_

_She nodded, blinking back the tears of relief and worry and stress. “All right. Is there anything you need?”_

_That was the way the conversation had ended in the reality Catherine remembered. Reality unwound as Father turned away from his patient to look at her. Father had been angry with her---furious even---but the hate in his eyes was new. “What I need,” Father said, fury roughening his words, “is for you to leave us. Don't you think you've caused enough damage? Vincent could have been killed and that man Isaac---you let a topsider see him! I knew you were trouble from the moment Vincent brought you to us!” The grey eyes were cold as steel. “And if he dies, I'll hold you responsible.”_

***

Catherine opened her eyes. “That's not what happened,” she said, feeling Vincent's hand tightening on her own. 

“No,” the apparition said. “But it could have. Your...fascination with Vincent has put him at great risk. Jacob knows this and will never trust you.”

The brief raspy laugh from Vincent startled her. “Father trusts her more than you can imagine, Paracelsus. He's trusted her with my life, time and again, and believed she could pull me from madness and despair when there was nothing he could do. You don't understand....anything.” Vincent clambered to his feet; even with one hand on the wall to steady himself, he was a figure of power and strength. “I love her,” he said, “as she loves me. That's what you could never understand.”

“Monsters don't love,” the apparition snarled, and reality faded again.


	14. Chapter Fourteen- I to My Perils

Chapter 14: I to My Perils 

They were in a courtroom, a long, rectangular room with wood paneling. Catherine had been in and out of such rooms for what felt like forever, but this court was different. The judge was Ma'at, looking not that out of place, with her gold scale in front of her and her unblinking hawk's eyes. On one side---the prosecutor's side, Catherine realized---was the apparition of Paracelsus. On the other, where the jury box should be, there was no one, save a grouping of witnesses whose faces were shadowed. To the left of Ma'at was Vincent, standing tall and proud even though she knew he was in a lot of pain. He would not admit weakness, not here, not now.  
Ma'at raised one feathered wing and silence fell in the court. “Paracelsus seeks a verdict,” she said, but the slight bite of distaste to her tone was impossible not to hear. “He wishes the court to decide if Vincent is man or a beast. If the verdict is decided in his favor, Vincent will remain here. If the verdict is not, then Vincent shall decide the fate of his accuser.”

The faceless head of Paracelsus' apparition turned. It was impossible to truly assess body language in a creature with no eyes or face or mouth, but Catherine thought the apparition was surprised. “Do you agree to the conditions?” Ma'at continued. 

“And if I... _we_...say no?” Catherine asked.

“This place, which you call Elysium, is where all questions must be answered. If you refuse to answer them, then you both remain.” 

Catherine met Vincent's gaze across the courtroom. Blue eyes looked into her own and the thought was as clear as if he'd spoken. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, apparently. Answer for both of us, Catherine. You have that right. “I...we...accept,” she replied. 

Ma'at nodded. Turning to Paracelsus, she asked, “And you? If you fail to answer what is asked of you, your spirit will remain here.”

“Of course I agree,” the apparition said, waving a disinterested....well, you couldn't call it a hand, Catherine thought, somehow amused at trying to figure out what he was waving. But the effect was the same: the apparition clearly considered himself (itself?) already the victor. 

_Shows you what you know,_ Catherine thought. Though the stakes had never been higher, and she'd never been a defense attorney, she had been in one court or another almost all of her professional life. This was a battle she could not, must not lose. And she would win; she would rescue them both as Vincent had saved her, time and again. 

Ma'at's golden eyes fixed on the apparition. “Call your first witness.”

***

A woman stepped out of the shadows; Catherine didn't recognize her, but from the jolt through their bond, Vincent clearly did. _Phillip's wife, Lark,_ she heard as clearly as if he had been speaking in her ear.

_I can hear you,_ Catherine said, trying to hide her shock. _How is this even possible?_

_Ma'at's doing, I suspect,_ Vincent replied. _Remember what Winslow said? Paracelsus has the advantage in that he's chosen a witness you do not know. I believe Ma'at has opened our bond further to even the odds._

_All right,_ Catherine sent back. _What do I need to know about Lark?_

_She blamed me for Phillip's death,_ Vincent responded. Catherine nodded, remembering the story of Phillip as Vincent's Other had told it to her. She folded her hands, waiting. 

“Please state your name,” Paracelsus' apparition said as the woman sat down.

“Lark Alvarez,” she responded. 

“Thank you,” Paracelsus said. “How old was Vincent when you first met him?”

“Fifteen,” Lark responded. 

Catherine did some quick math. Fifteen would have been the year Lisa left, the same year of his first descent into madness. _I think I know where he's going with this,_ Catherine thought.

_So do I,_ Vincent thought. _Lark...she saw what I was then. Everything._

His pain and sorrow were a dark current in the bond. _It's over now, and you're not the same person, are you?_

_No,_ Vincent replied.

_Then...try to let it go. Please._ She sent all the warmth she could through the bond and felt his pain recede.

“And how did you meet Vincent?” the apparition asked.

Lark shifted uncomfortably. “The first time I met him, he was trying to break down an entrance gate leading Above.”

“And how did you feel?” Paracelsus asked.

“I was terrified,” Lark replied. “Who wouldn't be? And after what he did to that girl---well, I was scared. And I couldn't believe they'd let him live among us, a monster like that.”

Vincent closed his eyes. “I have nothing further,” the creature said, the smug glee coating his words.

Catherine stood. “Mrs. Alvarez. May I call you Lark?”

Lark nodded. “You said you were scared of Vincent, correct?” Catherine asked.

“Yes, of course,” Lark said. “Who wouldn't be?”

“A boy of 15 and you were scared of him?” 

“Not just any boy,” Lark replied. “He hurt that dancer badly enough that she had to leave to escape him.”

“Were you there when the dancer was hurt?” Catherine asked on a hunch, while another part of her hurt for the boy Vincent had been, for Lisa, and for the incident that had been blown so horrifically out of proportion.

“No, but I heard----”

“Then you don't really know what happened, do you, Lark?” 

Lark sat back and folded her arms. “I know what I saw. That boy nearly forcing the gate open. He was mad, wild...dangerous.”

“I see,” Catherine said. “How long did you live in the tunnels?”

“Six years,” Lark replied.

“So you were so terrified of that 'dangerous monster' that you continued to live in close quarters with him for another six years?” 

“I had nowhere else to go,” Lark said. 

“Neither did he,” Catherine said. She bit her lip, considering. Better to bring it all out now, she decided. “Now, did there come a time when you married?”

Lark nodded, the sadness evident in her eyes. “Yes, my husband Phillip.”

“And Phillip is dead, correct?”

“Yes,” Lark replied.

“And how did he die?”

“Vincent killed him,” Lark said. 

“Can you explain that further?” Catherine asked. “I'm sorry if it's painful but we really do need to know the details.”

“There were invaders in the tunnels, and one of the sentries was killed,” Lark said. “Vincent and another man were supposed to go out on sentry duty, but Phillip switched sentry duty with the other man, and they were ambushed.”

“So he died in a tragic accident?” Catherine asked gently.

“No, he died because Vincent picked my husband to go with him. And Phillip was just ahead of Vincent when they were ambushed,” Lark shot back. “If he'd picked someone else or gone alone, Phillip wouldn't have died.” 

_I didn't pick Phillip that night,_ Vincent said, the memory burning raw. _Not that it truly matters. But the choice to go was Phillip's. Father asked if Phillip could switch with Ethan, and Phillip agreed._

“I see,” Catherine said. “Would it make a difference if I told you that Vincent didn't pick Philip? That Phillip volunteered?”

“I...didn't know that,” Lark said.

“And I'm guessing you didn't ask, either,” Catherine replied. “Would it have made a difference?”

“Phillip is still dead, and now, so am I. But yes, it would have made a difference to know it was his choice and not something he was ordered to do.” She brushed her tears aside. “He was my life. I couldn't bear losing him.”

“I understand,” Catherine said. She glanced at Ma'at and at Paracelsus. “I have nothing further.”

***

The next witnesses, perhaps not surprisingly, were Marty Belmont's men, the men who had murdered Carole Stabler and nearly killed Catherine. She was able to dispose of their testimony fairly quickly; making the case that Vincent had killed them in her defense wasn't difficult. Paracelsus truly did not grasp the dynamic of their relationship; that Vincent would risk so much---the exposure of himself and of his own world---for love, to protect her. _He can't understand what he's never truly felt,_ Vincent said when their testimony was done. _He murdered his own wife, after all._

Yet there was a pattern to Paracelsus' questions, and it wasn't difficult to follow. His questions were designed to emphasize what he'd always seen Vincent as---an uncontrolled, wild, primal beast. The kind of monster, Catherine realized with a sickening lurch to her stomach, who could be manipulated under his tutelage to be excellent weapon against the people of the tunnels. And again she wondered at just how close Paracelsus had come to taking the infant Vincent and molding him into that sort of being. 

“Your next witness?” Ma'at asked. 

“I call Lizzie to the stand,” Paracelsus said.

_Oh, god,_ Catherine thought, and felt an echo of Vincent's own horror through their bond. Lizzie. The woman who'd belonged to the feral Outsider family, the only woman he'd ever killed. He'd killed Lizzie before she'd had a chance to kill him, so it was arguably self-defense, but the pain he'd felt had ricocheted far beyond the events of that night. 

The woman who seated herself at the witness stand was filthy and disheveled. “Your name, please,” Paracelsus asked.

“Lizzie. Ain't got another,” she replied.

“Very well,” Paracelsus said. “How did you die?”

“That...thing. He killed me,” Lizzie replied. “After he got Micah and Hogg and Jezz.”

_And after they tortured and killed Randolph and Simon and Matthew,_ Catherine thought savagely. “And what were you doing in the tunnels that night?” Paracelsus asked.

“Nothin',” Lizzie said. “We weren't doin' nothin' but lookin' for food.”

Ma'at's hawk's eyes narrowed slightly. “You are bound to tell the truth here, Lizzie. I sense...dishonesty in your words.”

Lizzie's sullen gaze turned back to Paracelsus. “We were lookin' for food. Those others wouldn't let us have what we needed.”

“And what did you need?” Paracelsus asked. 

“Everything,” Lizzie said. “Wasn't anyone but us, just us four and the boy.”

Ma'at turned to Paracelsus and the scales in front of Ma'at tilted, just slightly. “Your witness is a liar. Either she answers honestly or I will send her back. Don't try my patience, Paracelsus.”

“Very well,” Paracelsus hissed. “Since I'm not to be allowed to ask any further questions, I have nothing further.”

Catherine stood. _I was there. I know what happened. Again, Vincent killed to save me---never mind that I wouldn't have been there if Father hadn't asked me to come, the fact remains that those four deaths are on my hands as much as his._

_No, they aren't,_ Vincent thought back to her. _I didn't enjoy what I did, but they threatened my home, my family, you...I'd do it again._

But you shouldn't have had to, Catherine sent back, remembering the long nights of his pain and sorrow that had followed. Aloud, she faced this latest witness. “Lizzie,” she asked, “what were you and the others doing in the tunnels?”

“Doin' what I said, lookin' for food.” 

“You were given food,” Catherine replied. “And quilts and blankets. What did you do with them?”

“Ate the food,” Lizzie replied. “Burned the blankets and quilts. Weren't no use to us except as tinder.”

“And then what did you do?” Catherine continued, relentless. 

“Went looking for more. Found a man, who wouldn't give us food.”

_Randolph,_ Vincent thought to her, his memories of the young man tinged with regret and sorrow. _Randolph didn't refuse to give them food. He probably didn't have any on him; he was on sentry duty that night._

“So you asked him for food, and he didn't give you any. What happened then?”

“Micah killed him. Said he weren't no use to us if he didn't have food. Boy was weak anyway.” 

Catherine paused, letting that detail sink in, that Lizzie had been there and had done nothing to stop the killing, and hadn't even found anything particularly wrong with Micah's actions. She stared at the apparition. _The real monster here isn't Vincent. It never was._ “Let's return to the night you died,” Catherine said, trying to send as much warmth as she could to Vincent, knowing the next line of questioning would distress him. “How did you die?”

“I told you,” Lizzie said, sullen. “That...thing killed me. Last thing I remember is being rammed hard against a wall, then nothing.” 

Among the deaths of the outsiders, it had been Lizzie's that had disturbed Vincent the most. Catherine understood, and had tried many times to get him to see that his actions were justified but she knew that the pain of that night still resonated. “And how were you rammed against a wall? Where were you?”

“On his back,” Lizzie replied. “After he killed Micah, I jumped on him.”

“You had knife at his throat, is that correct?”

Lizzie shrugged. “Well, sure. He killed Micah and Jezz and Hogg. Wasn't going to let him live.”

Catherine turned to Ma'at. “Vincent defended himself while under attack. I don't agree that his actions make him a monster.”

“Nor do I,” Ma'at said. She turned to Lizzie and the woman vanished. Ma'at turned back to Catherine. “It's your turn now. You may choose witnesses in defense of Vincent. They must already be deceased, of course.”

_We sure never covered this in Criminal Procedure,_ Catherine thought, smothering an astonished smile. “Thank you. May I have a moment with my...client?”

Ma'at nodded, and Catherine walked over to where Vincent was standing. “How are you?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper. She was aware of Paracelsus' apparition not five feet away from them. 

“Well enough,” Vincent said in the same tone. 

She drew back a little to look at him. The lines of strain around his eyes, strain she'd not seen since the Silks, told a different story but she wasn't about to disagree with him aloud. “Who should I call to help me defend you?”

“Winslow, Ellie, and Phillip,” Vincent said. “They were....fearless and faithful in life.”

She nodded. “Anyone else you can think of?”

Vincent shook his head. “All right, then,” Catherine continued. “I'll think of someone else. But those three should be fine to start with.”

Catherine clasped his hand once, a gesture of love and reassurance, and stepped back. “I'm ready to begin, your honor.”

A faint smile might have crossed Ma'at's face; it was difficult to tell in the candle-light. “Very well. Call your first witness.”


	15. Chapter Fifteen- Of Cheat and Charmer

Chapter 15: Of Cheat and Charmer

Vincent watched as Catherine called Ellie to the stand. “Catherine!” Ellie said, smiling. “I can't believe...what am I doing here? You're not dead, are you?”

Catherine smiled at the young girl's enthusiasm, and her pang of grief crossed through their bond, echoing his own. “No, I'm not dead. Neither is Vincent.”

“Oh, that's good,” the girl said, relieved. “I was afraid when he got sick that...” 

Catherine's eyes met his, then turned back to Ellie. “We all were afraid of that,” Catherine said. “Ellie, you've been called here for a reason.” She gestured to the apparition of Paracelsus standing just behind them. “Paracelsus wants a verdict that Vincent is a beast, not a man.”

“Well, that's stupid,” Ellie said, with all the scorn of the young. “Vincent's just Vincent. He doesn't have to be one or the other.”

A wry smile crossed Catherine's face. “Thank you for that, Ellie,” she said. Her tone was gentle and Vincent remembered she'd had a more than a bit of practice at working with child witnesses. “I'm going to ask you some questions and then Paracelsus is going to ask you some. Just tell the truth, okay?”

Ellie nodded, and Catherine began. “Ellie, how did you first meet Vincent?”

“When you rescued me and Eric from that orphanage,” Ellie said, twisting the end of one of her braids. “Eric had already met him.”

“What did Eric tell you?” Catherine asked.

“He said that Vincent looked different, but very cool,” Ellie said, smiling. “Then everyone took me to Eric and then I met Vincent.”

“And what did you think?”

“He was....really cool,” Ellie said and Vincent remembered she and Samantha as they had been, two young girls growing up in the safety and love of the tunnels. It should always have been that way for Ellie, he mourned, and but for a random bacteria brought by a Russian sailor, it would have been. 

In the way of this place, where unusual things happened without any warning, Ellie turned to him then. “Vincent,” she said, “I didn't want to leave everyone. But I died knowing I was loved, that Eric would be loved. That's not a bad end.” 

Vincent smiled, just a bit, and Ellie turned her attention back to Catherine. “I thought he was fantastic.”

“And you weren't afraid, even a little bit?” Catherine asked.

“No,” Ellie said. “He was always so gentle, so kind with us kids. Even when we'd done something wrong, he never raised his voice. You just knew he wasn't happy.” 

“And did you love him?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Ellie replied. “Not at first, you know. But he made you want to trust him, to believe what he said. I'd never met anyone like him before. Eric and me, we got moved around a lot---most of the foster parents we had wanted him, or me, but not the both of us, or they thought we were too old to be a part of a family. Vincent and the others never treated us like that, like we were a burden.” She paused, biting her lip a bit. “I had nightmares, bad ones, those first few weeks in the tunnels---nightmares that I was still back at the orphanage, or that Eric was gone. Vincent was always there. He always understood.” She tilted her head. “How could I ever be afraid of him?”

“Thank you, Ellie,” Catherine said, smiling back at the girl. “I have nothing further.” With one last reassuring look at Vincent, she sat down. 

Paracelsus' apparition slithered---there was no other word for it, Vincent decided---up to the witness box. “Ellie,” it said, “Vincent rescued you, correct?”

Ellie nodded. “He saved me and Eric, yeah,” she replied, showing only the smallest bit of fear at the shade in front of her.

“And he's killed for you, is that correct?” the apparition asked.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “Those men were going to hurt me and Eric. Vincent saved us. He's not a killer.” Something in Ellie's eyes flashed. “Not like you are.”

The apparition drew back a bit, clearly not expecting her reaction. “I know who you are,” Ellie said, and there was no fear in her voice. “Everyone talked about you, how you killed those people above by selling them drugs. And maybe I didn't...survive....until that Winterfest, but I saw you kill Lou. You're just a hateful, nasty old man who finally got what was coming to you.”

The apparition turned its face to Ma'at. “I ask that her response be stricken.”

Ma'at smiled faintly. “It's no concern of mine when a witness speaks the truth, Paracelsus. Your crimes are not...unknown.”

“The witness is biased,” Paracelsus tried again.

The feathers on Ma'at's wings shifted a bit as she shrugged. “And the witnesses you called weren't? You chose this forum. So in the parlance of this time...deal with it. Since you don't have any further questions for Ellie---”

Ellie stood then. “May I say something to Vincent first, before I go?”

Ma'at nodded, and Ellie left her chair and came to stand in front of him. She was much as she had been the day she died; a girl on the cusp of adulthood, forever young. Vincent mourned again for the things she would never see or experience: growing up, a family of her own, seeing Eric, who'd become so interested in science that there was speculation he might one day go to medical school; Eric, who was becoming a strong, helpful, considerate young man in spite of all the horrors he and Ellie had endured. Ellie's bright brown eyes stared up at him. “I got your letters, Vincent,” she said quietly. “Tell Eric...tell Eric I love him, and that I know he was sorry. Tell Father it wasn't his fault. And I love you too.”

He reached out to touch her hair, knowing it was the last time he would ever do so. “I love you too, Ellie. Be well.”

She ran across the room and gave Catherine a hug, then disappeared. 

“I think we'll...take a brief break,” Ma'at said. 

And the courtroom disappeared around them.

***

Vincent leaned against the wall, slumping now that there was no longer any need to stand. Catherine ran to him. “You're not well,” she said. 

The rasp of his breathing was harsh in his ears, echoing in the small chamber. “No,” he replied. “But I'll be all right, Catherine. Eventually.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Uh- _huh,”_ she replied, clearly not believing a word of it. Her hand, small but strong for all its size, brushed aside his bangs to look up into his eyes. “I wish this were over and the verdict decided, so we could go home.”

The feel of Catherine's hand on his face as she stroked the short fur on his cheekbones was soothing and he leaned into her touch. “I know,” Vincent replied. “Though matters do seem to be coming to a head.”

Catherine nodded. There was a brief shudder of nervousness and fear through their bond. “You're afraid,” Vincent said. “Why?”

“This isn't any ordinary courtroom, Vincent, and Paracelsus is no ordinary prosecutor. What if I fail? What if Ma'at decides—in spite of all the evidence---that Paracelsus is right? I don't want to fail you. I can't.”

He clasped her hand where it rested against his face, and pressed it against his chest. “Do you feel that? I'm alive because you had the courage to do what no one else would or could. You went into that cave and you saved my life. You won't fail at this.”

Catherine smiled and nestled against him, listening, Vincent thought, to the sound of his heart. She was a warm weight in his arms and although his ribs ached and he felt bruised and twisted and torn all over, there was nothing else he wanted to do but hold her. “It will all be well soon,” he said, brushing a kiss to the crown of her head, and wishing with all his heart it might be true.

***

The trial restarted with the same suddenness it had begun originally. It seemed to Catherine that she blinked and they were back in the long, paneled room with the apparition of Paracelsus doing its level best to ooze hatred and disdain. She ignored the shade, much as she had any number of defendants and their attorneys. “Are you ready to begin?” Ma'at asked.

“Yes, I am, thank you,” Catherine replied. “I would like to call Phillip to the stand.” 

In a blur and a blink, he was there. “Why am I not surprised to be here?” Phillip asked, smiling. “Hello, Catherine.”

She smiled back at him, seeing instantly why he and Vincent had been such close friends. There was much of the same, steady warmth in Phillip's dark eyes as there was so often in Vincent's. “Hello, Phillip. I'm sorry to call you back from...wherever you were, but...”

“Nah, man, don't worry. I knew this was coming. Once the oil slick---” he gestured to Paracelsus' apparition--- “got busy, I knew we'd all be needed.”

A ripple of amusement passed through the court at his words. Ma'at successfully kept the smile off her face but there was a distinct glint in her gold hawk's eyes. “Phillip, the...oil slick...has a name. Please use it.”

Phillip nodded. “Sorry, ma'am,” he said, though it was abundantly clear he was not sorry. He wasn't unaware of the evil Paracelsus represented, Catherine sensed---far from it---but he was refusing to be terrified when facing him. _Again, just like Vincent,_ Catherine thought. 

She took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. “Phillip, you know why you're here, correct?”

“Yeah, I do,” he replied. “Paracelsus thinks Vincent is a monster. You don't. Ma'at's here to decide the point.”

She nodded. “Earlier, we heard testimony from your wife that she had been terrified of Vincent from the first time she saw him in the tunnels. What was your impression of him, the first time you met?”

Phillip grinned. “Honestly? The first time I saw him, I thought I was hallucinating.”

_Phillip was an alcoholic when Devin and I found him,_ Vincent sent to her through their bond. 

“I had the D.T.s and a galloping case of pneumonia,” Phillip continued, clearly not bothered by the memory. “I hadn't had a bottle in a few days and I thought he was just another hallucination. I'd crawled into this drainage ditch in the middle of winter, thinking to get out of the cold. Vincent and his brother nearly fell over me.” 

“Were you afraid of him?” Catherine asked.

“No. How could I be? He and Devin must have called for help or something, because the next thing I knew, I was someplace warm and safe.”

_So I wasn't the first person you rescued,_ Catherine thought, remembering that same feeling of safety and love that had sustained her in her own time of trial.

_No,_ Vincent replied, smiling through their bond. _Father was greatly…alarmed…that it happened once, let alone twice._

_I'll bet,_ Catherine thought back to him. Aloud, she said, “And then what did you think?”

Phillip smiled. “Father, he tried to convince me that what I’d seen was a hallucination, and I almost believed him. Almost. And maybe I would have, if Vincent and his brother had stayed away.”

Catherine could just about picture that. Even if Vincent would have listened to Father’s cautions and warnings, she knew Devin wouldn’t have. “And you still weren’t scared?”

“No,” Phillip laughed. “It’s hard to be afraid of a hallucination that beats you at chess. Once I’d…dried out…Father must have decided I could be trusted after all, and admitted me to the community.” 

_How did that happen?_ Catherine asked. _I can’t see Father being that trusting._

_He’s not,_ Vincent thought back to her. _Devin and I spoke for Phillip. I was eleven, Devin was 14 and we were both terrified to go before the council, but Father said since we’d broken the rules and gone to see Phillip anyway, we had to figure out what to do with him. It was a fair solution---the rules we have do exist for a reason---but I don’t think Father counted on the council agreeing with us._

“What about later?” Catherine asked. “Lark testified she was afraid of Vincent because of the way he acted when he was sick as a teenager.”

“Lark didn’t know him that well,” Phillip said. “She’d only been down below a few weeks at the time, if that.” His voice softened. “Vincent was sick. I certainly wasn’t at my best when I was more interested in booze than eating or working, you know?” 

Catherine remembered throwing a headlight at Vincent in a haze of horror and fear, and nodded. “And you were friends?”

Phillip nodded. “Yes. He’s a good man, and you know there ain’t nearly enough of those in this world—or any other,” he finished with a pointed look at Paracelsus. “He can be dangerous when cornered and he's fierce defending his family and those he loves, but a monster? No. Never.”

“Thank you,” Catherine said, liking him, wishing she'd had a chance to know him in life. “I have nothing further.” She returned to her side of the courtroom.

Paracelsus rose to confront this latest witness. “So you say he's not a monster,” it drawled with a faint mocking undertone. “What would you say if I told you that he hurt a teenaged girl so badly that she had to leave the tunnels?”

Whatever reaction the apparition was expecting, it wasn't what he received. Phillip just rolled his eyes. “I'd say that you don't know Lisa. And you don't know what happened.”

“You were not in the room, surely,” the apparition returned. “Only Vincent and the dancer were.”

“No. But I was refilling supplies in the stockroom when Mary came in looking for bandages. She asked for gauze and iodine, and when I gave it to her, she left muttering something about 'Lisa getting two small scratches for all the trouble she caused.'” Phillip tilted his head. “If she'd been injured severely, a little bit of gauze and iodine wouldn't have taken care of it.” He sighed. “Besides, I knew Lisa. She was trouble, always teasing the teenaged boys and some of the younger men too. Vincent...had a crush on her and couldn't see what she was really like. I don't know what really happened, but whatever it was, I know Lisa bears at least some of the blame.”

“And the fact that she left the tunnels isn't...suggestive to you?” the shade asked.

“Lisa got tossed out on her ear,” Phillip said, blunt. “I'm not saying it was the correct choice, but she was sent above to live with her dance teacher. All it suggests to me is that Father wanted to protect Vincent.”

“And how he killed those men after you died doesn't make him a monster, an animal, either, I suppose?” Paracelsus drawled, and the mockery was in full force this time.

“They'd already killed James, and God knows how many people above with that poison they were selling,” Phillip said, clearly disgusted. “Which you should know about. Now, I was dead at the time, but I don’t see that Vincent had much choice, given the threat those men represented to our home.” 

Paracelsus paused, perhaps trying to regroup, and Catherine used the moment to raise her hand. “If I may, your honor….?”

Ma’at nodded. “Yes. What did you wish to say?”

“Paracelsus wasn’t there for the…incident between Lisa and Vincent. His characterization of Lisa’s injuries being severe enough that she had to leave the tunnels is misleading. Lisa herself described it, years later, as being ‘child’s play.’” Almost against her will, Catherine remembered Vincent’s festering, guilt-ridden anguish on her balcony. The incident hadn’t ever been “child’s play” to him. “Further, Paracelsus wasn’t there when Phillip died, since he’d been exiled several years before. Therefore, I submit that Paracelsus is attempting to mislead the court through lies and innuendo.”

“It’s a fair point,” Ma’at replied. “How did you come to know of these incidents, Paracelsus?”

“Their pipes are monitored, their messages decoded,” Paracelsus replied. “Nothing below remains secret for long.”

_Did you know this?_ Catherine asked.

_Yes,_ Vincent replied. _All of our pipecodes came from John Pater’s early works; over time we’ve worked to shorthand the system, to simplify it and remove it further from its origins, but a certain amount of…leakage is something we’ve come to accept. And just as Paracelsus’ followers monitored our communications, we have, from time to time, monitored theirs._

“But you weren’t physically present for either incident?” Ma’at asked, and the apparition appeared uneasy under that sharp gold gaze. 

“No, but--- “ it said, and Ma’at narrowed her eyes. “If you weren’t there,” she said, “then you don’t know what really happened. I’m going to disregard your entire line of questioning.”

“You can’t!” the apparition snarled and Ma’at’s voice, sharper than any gavel’s ring, sliced through the air. 

“You chose this court. Don't presume to tell me what I can do in it. You tempt me to end this trial here and now, Paracelsus. Continue acting this way, and the verdict will not be in your favor.” 

The apparition retreated just a bit. “Very well,” it said, sullen. “But if I may...”

Ma'at narrowed her eyes. “Tread carefully, Paracelsus.”

The apparition nodded. “The testimony of two of my witnesses was not....sufficient. I would like to call one more witness to prove my case.”

“Catherine has not had a chance to call her next witness,” Ma'at replied. “What are your thoughts, Catherine?”

Across the courtroom, Catherine's eyes met Vincent's. _It doesn't matter who he calls. A hundred witnesses, a thousand. You're not a monster. You never were._

_I know that, my Catherine,_ Vincent thought back to her. _But Ma'at's warning is one you should heed as well. Tread very cautiously; where Paracelsus is concerned, there are moves and counter-moves and hidden shadows everywhere._

“If the court has no objection, I have no problem waiting to call my next witness,” Catherine said, mentally bracing herself for what might happen next.

“I wish to call Vincent's mother to the stand,” Paracelsus said, and the words fell in the too-quiet courtroom. 

Catherine stood, buffeted by a long-hidden pain coming through their bond. Vincent's mother? The woman who abandoned him on the coldest night of the year? _Vincent?_ Catherine asked, for just as the wave of pain had hit her, the bond itself had shut down briefly. _Don't do this. Let me in._

_I'm sorry, Catherine,_ he thought back to her, and the impression she received was one of dazed confusion. _I didn't mean to shut you out. I had to...think. My mother? Here? I know what she thought of me then...what will she say?_

_No matter what she says, you know it won't matter. Not to me._ Catherine thought back to him. She felt the warmth of his love and his acceptance of her strength reach her briefly before a motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. 

Ma'at stood then, and the power and rage in her stance, wings spread and golden eyes glowing, was stunning. Standing, she resembled nothing so much as the hawk whose feathers she wore on her wings. “You cannot,” she all but hissed. “For one, Paracelsus, his mother is not dead and---as you know very well---you cannot call the living as witnesses to this court. And for another...Vincent's time to know of her is not now. No one can disrupt that, not you, not me. She will not be called here.” Satisfied that Paracelsus intended no further outrages, Ma'at sat down. “I am prepared to render my judgment now, unless you'd like to call your final witness, Catherine.”

Catherine looked over at Vincent and saw again how pale he was, the lines around his eyes tight and strained; despite his stance against the wall as if nothing at all was wrong, she knew he was far from well. They needed to return, and soon, but did she trust she'd proved her point enough? Did she trust Ma'at to judge in their favor? 

_I trust her,_ Vincent thought to her. _And...I would like to return home._

“I have nothing further, your honor,” Catherine said, and waited. 

***

The verdict, when it came, was decisive. “Vincent is no monster, no being to be molded to your interests, Paracelsus. I set him and his chosen free from Elysium. Your fate is in his hands now.”

Vincent stepped down carefully and came to face the apparition, stumbling slightly. He felt Phillip's arm on his own, steadying him.. “'The thousandth man,'” Vincent murmured and heard Phillip laugh, one last time. “Ah, man, you know that poetry stuff just makes my brain hurt,” Phillip said, smiling. “Say what you have to say to the oil slick. I'll keep an eye on him.”

The apparition faced Vincent, and Vincent wondered what it saw---the helpless infant he'd have turned into a heartless monster? “I would have made you a god,” it hissed.

“It's perhaps fortunate for you that I have no aspirations to godhood,” Vincent said, finding a reluctant bit of humor. “I wish Paracelsus to be judged upon your scale, Ma'at.”

Ma'at smiled. “A wise choice, Vincent. Go and join your chosen.” 

Every step felt like a knife was being stabbed under his ribs, but he managed---with Phillip's help---to walk over to Catherine's side. “I'm here,” she whispered as he sank down next to her, her tears in his hair. “I'll always be here.”

Phillip touched her shoulder. “Take care of him now, you hear?”

She nodded. “I will,” and Phillip disappeared. 

Ma'at stepped down from behind her judge's box and spread her hawk's wings. “You have terrorized,” she intoned, and although Vincent heard the words in English, he sensed they were somehow also said in the Egyptian of Ma'at's time. “You have been a man of violence. You have stirred up strife, you have wronged many, you have done evil. You have caused many to weep, you have attacked many men, you are a man of deceit .” The golden scales appeared before her; on one side was a feather, on the other, the image of a blackened heart. The scales tilted slowly and the heart outweighed the feather. 

“You are banished, Paracelsus,” Ma'at said, but he did not disappear. Instead, another figure emerged from the shadows. A woman, dressed in the practical tunnel garb Vincent had known all his life, her dark hair coiled on top of her head. 

“Oh, John,” the woman said, and her voice was heavy with sorrow and pity. “How far you’ve fallen.”

The apparition backed up against the wooden banister, as if only in her presence had he finally found something to fear. 

“You know who I am,” the woman said, turning to Vincent. 

Vincent nodded, though her face and voice had all but been lost in the dark shadowlands of dream, in blurred fragments he hadn’t fully recalled until Paracelsus’ plotting had brought her picture into the open. “Anna,” he breathed and felt Catherine clasp his hand. 

“Yes,” Anna said. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to stay with you. It was…all I wanted.” She turned to the apparition of her husband. “I’ve come to take you back, John.”

“Back where?” the apparition hissed.

“Where you should have gone in the first place,” Anna said. “Where else? The verdict has quite gone against you, and there’s no appeal, not here.” 

“And you’ll go…where?” 

Anna smiled. It was not a particularly friendly look and Vincent sensed how formidable she must have been in life. “Where you’ll never be. Come now, John. Don’t make Ma’at enforce her judgment. I don’t think you’d find Tu’at as hospitable as where you’re going.” She stepped towards Vincent. “Goodbye, my son. We'll not meet again for some time to come, but just know...I loved you.” 

Anna kissed Vincent gently on the forehead, and with a flash of light, she was gone, taking the apparition with her. And then it was a falling, a twisting and turning through light and dark, shadow and substance, light and cloudshadows...the only thing real or solid, the feel of Catherine's hand in his own. After what seemed an eternity, Vincent opened his eyes. 

“You're awake,” Narcissa said. “That's a good thing, Child.”

Catherine turned in his arms, dazed, clearly not at all sure that Narcissa was right, worried that he might not have survived the return trip. Vincent met her gaze and kissed her in reassurance and love. “We're back, beloved.”

_And I...I am whole._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ma'at's speech to Paracelsus is adapted from _The 42 Negative Confessions of Ma'at_ translated by Wallace Budge and found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat
> 
> Also..the remaining chapters are what earns the rating. *waggles eyebrows* :D


	16. Chapter 16- Epilogue, Part 1: Through Fog and Stones

Epilogue

I. Through Fog and Stones

If Elysium had been a place where situations and people appeared and disappeared without warning, it was nothing compared to the mayhem once he and Catherine had returned and awakened, Vincent reflected. Father wanted to do an exam, of course, and Mouse and Pascal and Jamie and Cullen and Lena with little Cathy and Kanin and Olivia and Mary had all stopped by in the space of hours with their best wishes....all of which was appreciated, but wearying too. What he wanted, needed, was quiet and Catherine and space in which to think. 

Finally, Father put his stethoscope away. “You're in better shape than I had any right to expect, Vincent,” he said, touching the side of his face in a gesture so familiar from Vincent's childhood. “You have a couple of cracked ribs, so I want you to rest and let them heal. No climbing tall buildings,” he said, with a glance at Catherine. 

She smiled back at him. “I'll be off work for another three weeks, Father.”

“Of course, Catherine. I'd forgotten,” Father replied, smiling. “And you? No ill effects from....?”

“From being unconscious for a day?” Catherine said, yawning. “No. Except that I'm really tired just now.”

“Hmm,” Father said. “Well, you know how Vincent is when he's recovering from an illness: he'll be up and trying to walk around long before he should and generally doing all sorts of things he shouldn't. So your job is to make sure he stays in that bed for a few days.”

A startled silence fell as Catherine's wide green eyes met Vincent's over Father's bent head. The older man's head jerked up as he realized what he'd said, and his face flushed--- _Father blushing?_ Vincent thought, amused and astonished. 

Catherine chuckled, tossing her long hair over her shoulder and meeting his gaze with a decidedly sultry look. “I...think I can manage that.” 

Vincent couldn't help it. No matter that it hurt his ribs, the laughter would not be contained. Pretty soon, they were all laughing in joy and release and happiness that the long dark nightmare was finally over. 

***

Father finally left and it was just he and Catherine in his chamber. They'd had dinner and once the dishes were cleared away, Vincent gingerly swung his legs over the edge of his bed and pulled Catherine to him. The silk of her hair was cool against his neck. “Do you think any of it was real?” Catherine asked. 

“All of it, yes,” Vincent responded. “Do you?”

She pulled back a little to look at him. “My rational mind---the part of me that kept saying Kristopher Gentian couldn't possibly be a ghost---says no. But...I don't need that much certainty in my life anymore. I believe it did happen, somehow...and I don't need any more proof than that.” 

Vincent sighed, unaccountably relieved. He'd been afraid that Catherine's need for absolute certainties would make her believe that Elysium had been just a dream. “You were worried?” she asked, touching his face. 

He nodded. “I know it sounds ridiculous.”

Catherine shook her head. “No, it doesn't. We went through a lot, you and I, in that place. I don't want it to be unreal, Vincent. I learned too much.” Her gamin smile reappeared. “Like what a good kisser you are. Talk about hiding your light under a bushel.” 

Vincent felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck and heard Catherine's delighted chuckle. “I didn't know you could blush,” she said. One lock of errant hair fell over her face and she moved to push it away, but Vincent reached up first and placed it behind her ear. When he would have moved his hand from her face, she placed her own over it. “I was so afraid, Vincent, so afraid I'd lost you to that darkness.” She leaned forward so that her forehead was touching his. “Please don't ever shut me out again. Don't ever let the darkness take you where I cannot follow.”

“There is no darkness,” Vincent whispered, feeling her warmth in his heart and knowing it to be forever true, “when I'm with you.” 

They stood like that for a time, until he felt her fatigue echoing his own. “Stay with me,” Vincent said.

Catherine smiled. “Did you think I'd run for the guest chamber now that you're awake? I'll stay as long as you'll have me.” 

Vincent watched as she pulled her shoes off, her movements in his chamber already as familiar as if she'd been there for years. He stood a bit unsteadily and pulled back the blankets, climbing in after her slowly and blowing out the one solitary candle by his bed. Her head came to rest on his shoulder and he thought again how utterly natural, how right, this was to have her in his bed. “I'm glad you stayed,” he murmured against her hair. 

“Where else would I be?” Catherine murmured, nestling carefully next to him. “Am I hurting you?”

His ribs were a little sore, but he wouldn't have moved her for all the worlds. “No,” Vincent replied, one arm pulling her close. Catherine wore only a light sweatshirt over some loose fitting pants and he could feel the heat of her through the thin material. That, too, was a revelation; instead of being afraid of her very nearness, as he had been before, now he allowed himself to enjoy the feel of her nestled against him, her legs intertwining with his own. _I was afraid...of this? Of her?_

_Of yourself,_ the Other chimed in helpfully. _But there's no need for that now._

And indeed, there wasn't. There was no fear between them, no worries about some dark inner beast rising up to harm her. There was just...Catherine, warm and safe in his arms, and as her hand came to rest near the open collar of his nightshirt, the thought of what they might one day do in this bed caused a very pleasant warmth to spread through him. “You're happy,” Catherine whispered, toying with the chest fur that peeked through the open collar. 

“Yes,” he said, running a hand through her hair. They had been through the darkness together, and now all there was...was light. 

***

Her days and nights below began to assume a certain regularity. In the morning, she and Vincent woke together and invariably, Catherine would find a carafe of coffee and breakfast left just outside the chamber entrance and so it had been with all their other meals as well. The rest of the day, they might well see no one else save for Father, occasionally, or Peter, more rarely. It was as if by some tacit agreement, the community had decided to leave the two of them alone. 

She had run into Mary carrying a load of linens one afternoon and had asked the older woman about it, curious, but the older woman denied any knowledge. “I'm sure that...whoever...had the idea, merely wished to give you and Vincent some time alone,” Mary had replied, eyes twinkling. Her expression sobered. “Catherine, we all know what you risked to bring him home, what you've both been through. This time together...take it, with our love.” 

And so she had. Vincent was, in some ways, much quieter in the days after Elysium; processing, she thought, all that had happened in that strange and mythic place. She would read to him, or he to her, or they would simply sit and talk, or he would write in his journal. It didn't really matter what they were doing, or not doing...it was simply enough to be together. 

One night, a peculiar restlessness struck him. She had been darting on the near edge of sleep, content and safe in the soft raspy waves of his voice, when he stopped reading and folded the book closed. “Vincent?”Catherine asked, stirring, the quick lurch of his feelings crossing the bond. He was not disturbed, she knew, but it was as if having spent so much time still and largely silent, he could no longer remain so. 

Vincent smiled at her over the edge of the closed book. “I need to take a walk,” he said. “Will you come?”

It had to be near on midnight, Catherine knew, but she'd have no more stayed behind than she would have walked barefoot in the snow. “Of course,” she said, putting her slippers on and grabbing her shawl from the end chair and wrapping it around her shoulders. His calloused hand took her own and the warmth of it, so far removed from the fevered heat of just few days previously, reassured her that he was healing. 

They didn't walk far, just to the Mirror Pool. The tunnels were hushed, quiet, the torches burning low. Vincent sat down in front of the pool with his usual grace and drew her down beside him. “The stars are so bright tonight,” Catherine said. 

He nodded, gestured at a far corner of the pool, well above the reflected horizon. “Look,” Vincent said, his voice hushed. 

“Oh, Vincent, it's a meteor shower,” Catherine said, wonder in her voice. “Did you know there would be one tonight?”

“No,” he said. “But it is beautiful, isn't it?”

“It is,” she agreed. Sensing an undercurrent stirring in their bond, Catherine cupped his chin in her hand, the bristles soft against her palm. “What is it?”

“Father said a meteor fell the night I was found, the night Anna brought me below,” Vincent replied. 

Catherine thought back to Father's story, the recounting of Vincent's discovery that he told the children as she'd heard it one night some months before. “Father never mentioned that detail,” she said, bemused.

Vincent shrugged. “He also never mentioned Anna, either.” His mouth quirked in a faintly bitter smile. “He used to tell that story, complete with the meteor falling, when I was a boy. Then some of the other children read the Superman comics and....”

“Oh, I see,” Catherine said, remembering the infant Clark Kent---what had his real name been? she couldn't remember now---falling from the sky, an orphan from Krypton. “And the other children thought....?”

He nodded. “Yes. There was speculation for weeks that I was an alien. Father...was not amused. He never encouraged any speculation into what I might be.”

She stroked the unruly mane, knowing he would find it soothing. “Did you have ideas?”

“Of course,” he said, “but...it doesn't matter. Not really.” 

Her heart hurt for him. Had he denied his understandable curiosity so as to not make the others around him uncomfortable with the questions they, too, could not answer? “It does,” she insisted, gentle. “Every child wonders who they are, what they will be. Of course it matters.”

“I'll never know, though,” Vincent said. “And I stopped trying to figure out the mystery long ago.” 

Vincent was silent for a time after that, as the stars continued to fall. There was something stirring in their bond, turbulent, the force of the storm echoing in his blue eyes. She thought of that last revelation in Elysium, that Vincent's mother was alive. “Do you ever think of your parents?”

The expression on his face was a strange mixture of hope and reluctance, and Catherine thought she understood. “Of my mother, yes. Of my father, whoever he may be...no. Not as much. I have always had a father.” He spread his hands, claws glinting dully in the starlight. “I have wondered about my mother since I was old enough to know that many of the other children had one and I did not. That we know she is alive is one more detail but...it still tells me nothing, none of the answers I wish to know.”

“I used to have conversations with my mother, long after she died,” Catherine began, very carefully not looking at him, granting him that privacy. “I'd wonder why she and daddy never told me how sick she was, why she had to leave me, if I was saying or doing or acting the way she'd have wanted me to act. I don't think that conversation ever really stops; you just adjust to the idea that there won't ever be any answers.”

“Yes,” he whispered. “That's it, precisely. I've come to accept, for the most part, that there won't be any answers. But sometimes...”

Catherine nodded, looking at him again, at the reflected stars she knew he wasn't seeing. “Sometimes you'd still like to have the chance to ask?”

“Yes,” Vincent replied, drawing her near once again. “But I never will.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, feeling his breath stir the fine hairs on her forehead. “Ma'at said only that your time to know your mother was not now. She didn't say never. Perhaps, one day, you might be able to ask those questions.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed, “but for now, I'll focus on what I do know. I love you.”

They stayed at the Mirror Pool until the sun rose and the last of the stars disappeared.


	17. Chapter 17- Epilogue, Part 2: Between the Shadow and the Soul

Epilogue

Part 2: Between the Shadow and the Soul

The first time Catherine felt it, she was taking a hot shower in the bathing chamber just adjacent to Vincent's. Father had come in with his chessboard, and it had seemed a good a time as any to take a shower. Had it only been her imagination or had Vincent's eyes looked somewhat....predatory when Father entered? Rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, she smiled a bit at the memory. 

She had just stepped out of the shower and was reaching for her towel when she felt the rush of feeling through the bond. Vincent was... _satisfied._ Deeply so. _Father probably lost the game again,_ Catherine thought, amused. Then it occurred to her---she was sensing him. Not as a glimmer or a shout in times of need or danger, but she could feel what he was feeling, more strongly than she ever had in any place except Elysium. 

Toweling off and dressing in a patched tunnel sweater and jeans, Catherine closed her eyes and focused on the heart-string of their connection. And it was much like Vincent had described it all those months ago, when she was trying to fathom what this bond they shared meant---a filament that bound them beyond friendship or love. What would this mean for them, now? The connection on her part had always been largely one-sided, save for the times he had been in danger or afraid. But now the filament was different, stronger, a braided coil linking their souls. 

Pulling on her shoes and hanging up the towels to dry, she walked back towards Vincent's chamber. The sound of voices---Father's, mainly---made her smile. “I think I'll return to the hospital chamber where I can take care of patients who are actually sick,” he was saying, and there was a cheerfulness in his voice she'd not heard for far too long. 

He saw her at the chamber entrance and beckoned her inside. “Ah, Catherine. You'll be happy to note that Vincent is very much on the mend.”

She gazed at the chessboard and smiled. “Let me guess. He beat you?”

Father briefly raised his eyes to the rock ceiling, and Vincent's soft, raspy laugh echoed in the chamber as Father left. There was light in Vincent’s eyes as he watched his parent depart, a light that had also been absent for weeks. “You do look better,” Catherine said, and indeed he did. The purple shadows of exhaustion and strain had largely disappeared from under his eyes and the last of the bandages had been removed from his hands. Only the gauntness from his weight loss remained and even that would soon be gone if William’s cooking had anything to do with it, she reflected. 

He stood and opened his arms and she rushed into his embrace. “You smell good,” Vincent murmured against her damp hair.

“I…what? I do?” She pulled back to look at him. “I don’t think you’ve ever said that before.”

A wry smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I haven’t? I’ve clearly been remiss, then. You do smell good.”

Catherine chuckled, clutching the worn fabric of his vest. Abruptly, she noticed that he wasn’t wearing his usual assortment of layers, just a vest over a patched shirt and jeans. His hair, golden red in the candlelight, flowed over his shoulder and the soft tendrils of it brushed her hands. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. “What do I smell like, then?”

“Sunshine,” Vincent answered. “Also shampoo and soap and toothpaste. But sunshine mostly.”

Catherine swatted his arm with one hand and laughed, leaning against him again. His own scent was something completely different---candle smoke, earth and some spicy smell all his own. She breathed it in now, feeling the soft worn linen of his shirt against her face and the slight roughness of the fur underneath it. The slow thunder of his heartbeat was a rumble under her ear. “You were startled in the bathroom,” Vincent said, his voice reverberating through his chest. “Why?”

Lifting her head, she met his crystal blue eyes, darker now with concern. “I...sensed what you were feeling during your chess match with Father,” Catherine said. “It startled me. I've only been able to do that when you were in danger or afraid or...”

“In Elysium,” Vincent finished. “Yes. Does it bother you?” The current of worry in their bond was mixed with something else...nervousness, she thought. 

Catherine grasped the front of his vest more tightly and stared into his eyes. “It doesn't bother me, Vincent. But it was...surprising.”

“I'm sure,” Vincent replied. “I remember the first time I noticed that I could sense you strongly. I'm sure Father thought I'd gone---what is the medical term?---loony.”

Catherine chuckled at the dryness in his voice. “When was that?”

“When you returned above that first time and you'd had your surgery.”

She thought of what the anesthetic must have felt like to him. “Oh, Vincent, you felt that?”

He nodded. “I did.” 

***  
_It had been a bare two weeks after Catherine had left him, for what he’d thought was the last time. The glimmers of emotion he sensed from her---fear, despair---had gradually given way to the beginnings of the inner strength Vincent knew she possessed. He had thought of her often, as he taught the children, or patched the pipes, and come to the conclusion that when she was fully healed, the thread of their connection would gradually fade as she returned to her old life._

_He was playing chess with Father one afternoon when the contact, that slender filament which bound them, changed suddenly. Catherine was there, in the back of his thoughts. Then she was fading…was gone. He had not been able to halt the groan that rose from his throat and Father had looked at him, askance. “Vincent? Are you all right?”_

_“It’s Catherine,” he managed to say._

_And then Father’s hand was on his forehead, on his wrist, checking for illness. “You don’t look well. You have to be ill---hallucinating.”_

_Vincent barely managed to restrain the snarl that wanted to emerge at this denial. “No, she’s gone, Father, don’t you understand?”_

_“Well, of course she’s gone, Vincent. She has a life above. Really, you’re making no sense at all.”_

_Vincent watched numbly as Father urged him into bed, to a rest he did not need. What he needed, wanted with a strength that surprised him, was the feel of Catherine through their bond. Only then did he acknowledge how deep in him his need for her went, how much their bond---far from being a slender thread that would weaken in time---had become a part of his soul._

_Despite himself, he had dozed, only to be awakened by the jolt as the bond returned. Catherine was there, and needed him. She was_ there.

***

“Oh, Vincent, I never knew,” Catherine said when he’d finished. “If I had...” Her voice trailed off. Remembering that other Catherine, half-crippled with fear, only dimly beginning to sense the outlines of a life forever changed, she didn't know what she would have done if Vincent had reappeared so soon. 

“You see,” he said, his voice gentle and low, “why I did not come. I wanted to, as I've wanted nothing else in my life...but....”

“But,” Catherine finished, “you had to let me find my own path, make of my life what I could. I don't blame you, Vincent. If you had come...it would have been too easy to rely on your strength instead of finding my own.”

“Yes,” Vincent replied, clearly glad she'd understood. “It was hard to leave you, Catherine,” he whispered. “Almost past bearing.”

She grasped the collar of his shirt and pulled him down for a kiss. “I'm here now,” she said, just before the softness of his lips touched hers. “And I'm not leaving.” 

“I'm glad,” Vincent murmured. He nuzzled the galloping pulse at her neck, his hands warm on her back as he pulled her closer. 

The faint growl---a hungry, needy sound---that emerged from Vincent's throat echoed in the chamber. He jumped back, startled, his eyes wide and blue. “I am...sorry,” he gasped, fists clenching. He sat on the bed, his entire posture a line of dejection. 

For a moment, Catherine feared the return of their old agonized dance of “two steps forward, three steps back” that had characterized so much of their relationship, but as she listened to the sensations flooding their bond, she knew it was not that at all. “You're not afraid,” Catherine murmured, “not of yourself, not anymore. What is it?”

Vincent was uncomfortable but at least he looked her straight in the eye. “I didn't...that sound....I growled at you...like an animal,” he said, fists clenching and unclenching.

She knelt before him, taking his clenched fists in her hands, making his hands cease their tortured motions. “No, not like an animal, Vincent. What did you feel right before you made that sound?”

A faint smile crossed his face. “You have to ask?”

“No, I don't,” Catherine said, returning his smile, “but I need to hear you say it as much as you need to hear it aloud. What did you feel?”

His eyes darkened, returning to the color they had been just before he ended their embrace, a fathomless blue, the endless blue of night. “Passion. Love. Need,” Vincent replied. 

“Doesn't that tell you something?” Catherine said, standing. His head fell forward to rest on her belly and she rubbed the tense muscles of his shoulders. “Those sounds are normal, Vincent.” Gently, she cupped her hand under his chin and raised his head. “And I liked hearing them.”

He blushed then, a faint copper rose color. “Forgive me, Catherine. So much of...this...is new to me.”

“We are something that has never been,” she murmured. “And we'll learn together.”

Vincent looked up at her and smiled, a genuine smile untainted by guilt or shame or fear. “So...where were we?” 

And his words were a promise, new and entire, from his heart to hers. It might not be _now_...but it would be _soon._


	18. Chapter 18- Epilogue, Part 3: Under All Silences

Epilogue

III. Under All Silences 

Two weeks after leaving Elysium, Catherine returned Above. It was necessary, she knew, to return above for even a few hours; bills had to be paid and plants watered and doubtless there were a million and four messages from Joe clogging her answering machine, all the minutiae of the modern life. Still, she had not wanted to go; there was so much more tying her to the tunnels, to Vincent, now. In the end though, he had smiled and said, “I will be here when you return.” And that had been enough, because even though she was still a woman of two worlds, he knew perfectly well which one claimed her heart. 

She left him standing at the Central Park entrance, standing in the shadows of an early fall. And smiled as he waved goodbye. 

***

“Ah, Vincent,” Father said, stepping into his son's chamber. “Catherine has gone above?”

“Yes. She had some errands to attend to above. She will return later today,” Vincent replied, turning his head to look at him. The physician's eye noticed that Vincent looked healthier than he had for weeks. The father's eye saw that his son looked happier, more relaxed and more content than he could ever remember seeing. Father didn't fool himself; he knew who was responsible for both of those changes. “It's been good having her here,” Father said. 

Vincent's eyes widened fractionally, amused. “Don't look at me like that, Vincent,” Father replied, trying to remain stern. “She is a lovely woman and we became much...closer during your illness. Catherine must be…quite formidable in court.”

Vincent nodded. “I suspect she is, yes. What did you talk about, if I may ask?”

“You, mainly,” Father said, sitting in the old carved chair opposite the chess board. “There was much she didn’t know, much I had never told her.” He paused. “Actually, that’s why I’m here now. I have not been honest with you, Vincent. There were things I should have told you long before this, about John—Paracelsus---and Anna, but I didn’t. Catherine pointed out my folly in not giving you the whole truth. And I’m ashamed to say she was right. If I’d only told you…”

“Surely you acted as you felt best,” Vincent replied. “I know, I have always known, that you had your reasons. But…yes, I would like to know what really happened.”

“John murdered Anna with poison in a glass of wine. But I might have saved her, Vincent, saved a woman who wanted to be your mother. That failure haunts me to this   
day.”

***  
 _Looking back, Father knew when the trouble had begun, though at the time, preoccupied with the logistics of keeping a small community alive and healthy through a New York City winter, he’d passed the first clues off as just a marital spat. Anna, normally so vivacious and happy with the infant Vincent in her arms, gradually stopped showing up at the community meals. When John was questioned about it, he said only that his wife had the flu and didn’t want to infect the rest of them._

_It was only when Deirdre reported seeing Anna at night, walking the halls with her wailing baby in her arms but apparently quite healthy, that the first suspicions began. John was not widely liked in the community whereas Anna was, and Deirdre had been quite insistent. Something was very wrong with Anna._

_For years afterwards, Father would remember his next words to Deirdre. “Anna and John have been married a long time. Surely if there was a problem, he’d tell us.”_

_Deirdre had fled to the tunnels after an abusive marriage. The disdain in her blue eyes had been clear as she spoke. “Sure he might, if he wasn’t the problem.”_

_Reluctant to intervene in a marital spat, Father had shaken his head. “John wouldn’t do such a thing.”_

_Deirdre narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think, Jacob, that we quite know the limits of what John would or wouldn’t do. Just…talk to Anna, will you?”_

_And so he had gone, on a pretense of checking up on the infant Vincent, that strange foundling now being raised as John and Anna’s son. There was no real need to check on the boy; once he’d gotten past the serious bout of pneumonia he’d suffered shortly after coming to the tunnels, Vincent, now just a few months old, had proved almost relentlessly hardy. John, by some good fortune, had been out on a foraging expedition and Anna had been there, thin and pale, holding her son as if she quite feared to let the child out of her sight, or out of her arms._

_“John tells me you’ve been ill,” Father had begun, not knowing how else to open the conversation._

_Anna’s laugh was brittle and utterly lacking in humor. “Is that what he said? Well, then, it must be true.”_

_Her hands, he noticed as he took one in his own, were ice cold, her pulse hammering._ Stress, _he thought._ Or fear. _Aloud, he said, “Anna, you do know…if something were wrong…”_

_Anna shifted the child in her arms and he noted again how tightly she held the boy. “If something were wrong, Jacob…John and I aren’t getting along just now.”_

_“Why is that?” he asked, trying to be gentle. He hadn't missed the way her gaze kept straying to her son._ Some dispute over the boy, then, _he thought._

_“John wants things for Vincent that I...I can't....” Anna's voice trailed off. “I'm his mother, Jacob.”_

_“Yes,” he agreed, smiling, “and no finer one to be found, I know. Have you been arguing over Vincent?”_

_“I suppose you could call it that,” Anna said. “Please...I don't know what to do.”_

***

“I should have listened to her, to what she was trying to tell me,” Father said now, seeing the compassion in his son's eyes and rejecting it. He deserved no compassion, only Anna did. Brave, fierce, loving Anna, who'd been murdered by her husband a few hours after that conversation. “She was terrified and I misread the whole thing. Thought she was just misunderstanding what John wanted.”

“What did Paracelsus want?” Vincent asked, and there was no mistaking the venom with which he spoke the name. 

“He wanted...control, control of you,” Father replied, remembering. “John was...confused. No, that's not precisely it; I don't think I've ever met a man more sure of what he wanted. But he confused love with obedience, with power. If you didn't do as he wanted, then you were his enemy. Anna saw that, too late. And I saw it...not at all until she died.” He met his son's eyes, the slanted blue eyes set in that lion's face, and thought again how close he had been to losing him forever. . 

“Why didn't you tell me this years ago?” Vincent asked. “Or even when Paracelsus resurfaced last year?”

“I have always felt I had to be perfect for you, Vincent,” Father replied, not wanting to meet that intent gaze and yet unable to look away. “And I couldn't admit that my greatest mistake cost you a woman who would have been your mother. After a time...well, we had no direct contact with Paracelsus or his community for years. I came to believe that perhaps he'd found some other target for his obsessions, and after that...what would have been the point of telling you?” He sighed, the sound loud in the room. “I was wrong. I killed Anna, just as if I'd poisoned her myself. And I was a coward for not telling you earlier.”

“The fault lies only with Paracelsus,” Vincent said. “But it would have made a great difference to know that a woman wanted to be my mother.” 

“I know,” Father replied. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her before. But those times were…very painful for all of us who lived through them. After a time, it was just easier to not speak of it than to remember. Those first years after John was exiled were hard, very hard.” 

Vincent nodded. “I understand, Father. Truly. I carry my own burden of things I’d rather not remember.” He paused. “Is there anyone left who knew Anna well?”

Father thought about it for a moment. Deirdre had died in a rockslide the summer after Anna’s death and Winslow’s father Simon had passed away in the 1970s. “Narcissa knew her well, something which infuriated John no end. But yes, if you want to know more about her, I’d talk to Narcissa.” 

“Thank you,” Vincent replied, and Father marveled again at the strength of his adopted son. Another man would, perhaps, have clung to his fury and rage over having the truth withheld from him for so long and yet…there was no sign of anger, only relief at finally knowing the truth, however long-delayed it had been. 

He remembered Anna, white-faced, holding the dying infant, stubbornly insisting that the child would survive in spite of the hours of exposure, demanding that he put aside his prejudices and preconceptions and help. What a miracle she was, Father thought now, looking at Vincent, saddened again that she'd never had the chance to see the magnificent being he'd become. “She'd have been very proud of you, Vincent. And she loved you very much.”

There was a faint, cryptic smile on his son's face. “I know, Father. I know because...she told me.”

***

Bills paid, mail sorted, Catherine leaned against the wall and sighed. Fifteen messages on her answering machine, eight of them from Joe relating to one case or another and all of them relating to cases that Rita was covering in her absence. _Damn it,_ she thought, _what does he think “I need leave” means, anyway?_ But then, she acknowledged ruefully, in many ways she had only herself to blame. How many late nights had she worked? How many times had she taken work home? No wonder Joe thought she was accessible despite being on leave. 

She glanced around her apartment, seeing the clean lines and pastel colors. Aside from the furnishings, it was beginning to feel like a more luxurious version of her office. And it seemed strangely sterile when compared to the books and haphazard furnishings, the cheerful clutter, of the world below. In some deep, essential way, this place was no longer home. Home was Vincent and candlelight and the people below and the warm tug near her heart that was the bond. It wasn’t this place, not any longer.

The patio doors were still askew, barely hanging on their hinges, and she remembered the sternly-worded letter from the co-op board about the noise level coming from her apartment recently, along with a not so polite demand that she have the patio doors fixed. Catherine chuckled a bit ruefully, knowing that if she’d just rented the place instead of owning it outright, she’d have been evicted long ago. Between voodoo cults and rogue cops and stalkers, it was a miracle she hadn’t received more letters.   
She gathered the neat pile of bills into one hand and grabbed her purse. It was time to go home.

***  
Vincent met her at the basement threshold. She saw him there, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. “Well, hi there,” she said as she descended the stairs. 

His hands, calloused and warm and strong, touched her waist and braced her on the metal ladder as she descended into the tunnels. “Hello yourself,” Vincent replied, gathering her close. “I missed you.”

“Did you, now?” Catherine asked, loving the faint candle smoke-spice-leather smell of him. He was wearing a blue sweater and corduroys, patched and faded from many washings, and the color of the sweater made his eyes darker. 

“Mmm..hmmm,” Vincent said against her hair before kissing her. “I did.” 

Catherine grinned up at him. “I'll say. So, what did you do today?”

“Father and I talked,” Vincent said as they began walking towards the home tunnels, his hand clasping hers. 

From his tone, she gathered they hadn't had a casual conversation over a chessboard. Through their bond, she could sense nothing but contentment and relief. “Did your talk go well?” Catherine asked.

“Yes,” Vincent replied. “Father told me about Anna...for the first time, I heard the truth of what happened all those years ago.”

“I'm so glad you and he had a chance to talk,” she said. “How do you feel about what he told you?” 

“I feel as if I finally have some answers. For years, Paracelsus’ name was mentioned only in muttered whispers, and those who were around when he was exiled….they would not even speak his name. I understand why, now. And although I wish Father had told me about Anna earlier, at least I know now.” He looked at her sideways, the gesture making his eyes even more cat-like. “What about you? I sensed you were…quite frustrated earlier.”

“You could say that, yes,” Catherine said, and related the story of Joe and the pile of messages on her answering machine. “I take my work back to the apartment too much, and he’s come to depend on me being available,” she finished and felt Vincent’s hand tighten on hers. “What?” 

“You said the apartment, not home. Is it truly no longer home to you?” Vincent asked. 

“Home is where you are, Vincent. I don’t think I fully realized that until Elysium, but yes. It’s not home. It’s an apartment, a mailing address, but it’s not where you are.” She tugged on his hand and stopped walking. “What is it?” The emotions flooding their bond were too fast for her to sort out, but a shy hope was chief among them. 

The corridors were deserted, unusual for this time of day. She glanced at Vincent quizzically and he smiled. “We’re taking the long way around.” He turned to face her and took her other hand in his. “Catherine, I don’t know how to ask this.”

She smiled, reaching up to smooth the wild mane. “Don’t worry about ‘how.’ What do you want?” 

His arms enfolded her, his words a rumble in his chest. “I can’t believe I have the right to ask anything of you…but…no place is home without you. Not anymore.” Vincent ran one clawed hand through her hair and his eyes were the deep blue of the ocean he'd never seen.. “I want you to join your life with mine. Catherine, will you marry me?”

For a time---seconds, an eternity, perhaps---words escaped her. Then a vast universe of joy rushed through Catherine as she stood on tiptoe and pulled his head down to hers. “Yes.”

***

They stood there for a time, holding each other, until Vincent stirred. “If you're hungry, I believe William has some dinner saved for us.” 

Catherine smiled. “I am hungry,” she said, just as the rumble in her stomach threatened to reach epic proportions. “And then we can...talk?”

Vincent nodded, though his eyes were on her lips. “Yes. We can...talk.”

They returned to his chamber to find a hot stoneware tureen that revealed William's beef stew and an accompanying dish that held homemade bread. Finally, there was a teapot full of steeping tea. Catherine touched the warm teapot, thinking of what care and concern the meal represented. “It's been good, having this time,” Vincent said, picking up on her thoughts. 

“It has been,” Catherine agreed, smiling. “Though I know not to expect it once we're married.”

Vincent grinned in what could arguably be described as a roguish smile were it not for the love in his eyes. “No. Lack of privacy tends to be the norm here, though there are always ways around that.”

“There are?” she asked, sitting at the old table and pouring a bowl of soup.

“Yes,” Vincent replied, tearing of a chunk of bread. “Some chambers have doors or curtains.”

Her eyes darted to the entrance of his own chamber, where no curtain or door could be found. “Yet you don't have one.”

At his indrawn breath, Catherine met his eyes. “No. But there are places I have gone, the quiet places, the still places, when I've needed to be alone.”

And she wondered, briefly, if he never had a door because it was believed he'd never need one. Vincent, the different one, the outsider, the one who had been told---or had come to believe, it scarcely mattered which---that love and its passions and risks and joys was not, could not, be for him. Well, she had the rest of her life to prove differently to him. “Well,” Catherine said, “we'll need a door. Or a curtain at least.”

He blushed, a light flushing of rose under the golden tones of his skin. The blue eyes that met hers across the table, though, were anything but embarrassed. “Yes, we will.”


	19. Chapter 19- Epilogue, Part 4: A War of Lightning

Epilogue

4\. A War of Lightning 

Vincent poured water in the basin and watched as the ripples from the water stilled into an almost perfect mirror. He'd avoided looking into any reflective surface for so long that the avoidance of mirrors, of still water, was almost second-nature, but those fears he had left behind in the shadows of Elysium. Mentally, he shook himself; Catherine had gone above to discuss a transfer with her boss and would be returning below soon. They had plans to attend a concert, but first, he needed to wash up. He'd spent part of the day helping Cullen with some repairs to one of their gates and although the work wasn't physically taxing, Vincent was fairly sure that he had at least some dirt and dust streaked on his face. 

He had just finished drying his face off, when a sudden burst of warmth through their bond told him she was near, very near. And then Vincent turned, and there she was, a vision of light in a dress whose color he would never remember later. All he saw was her. Belatedly, he remembered that he wasn't fully dressed. “I'm sorry,” Catherine said, “but traffic was faster than normal so I came down early. I hope I didn't...disturb you?”

“No,” Vincent said, for although he was disturbed, it was...a pleasant sort of disturbance. “Let me get dressed and we'll---”

Catherine sat down in one of his chairs and crossed her legs delicately. He remembered the feel of her legs at night, intertwined with his own and the memory brought a sudden heat to his face. “That's an...intriguing look,” she said, smiling up at him. “What brought that on?”

He reached for the clean shirt on the bed, then released it. “You,” he said hoarsely. 

***

Catherine stared up at him. In the days of his illness, she'd seen him in every state of undress, had even helped Mary give him a sponge-bath when his fever had spiked. But that had been different, tending to a sick loved one. Vincent was almost fully healed now, the faint outline of his ribs the only visible reminder of those dark days. He stood before her now, bare-chested, with the last remaining droplets of water clinging to the fine downy hair on his forearms, and Catherine felt a faint flush climb up her neck. She knew Vincent been working earlier; she recalled him saying something about a security gate that wouldn't close properly. Just the thought of the turn and play of his muscles as he moved was enough to cause her skin to heat. “Oh,” Catherine managed to say. 

Vincent laughed. “That's not one of your more...cogent statements, Catherine.” 

She tilted her head, grinning. “No, I suppose it's not.” Her eye fell on a heavy dark green velvet curtain—from a theater, perhaps?---anchored partially behind the statue of Lady Justice. “Vincent? You got a curtain?”

“A wedding gift from Cullen,” Vincent replied, smiling back. “He's promised to help us build a door once he and Mouse can scavenge enough lumber.”

Catherine nodded. Their wedding was in a few weeks, delayed to allow Devin and Charles to be at the ceremony. “That was kind of him,” she said reaching out to touch the heavy velvet of the curtain. “It's quite an amazing thing when other people start seeing your dreams as possible, isn't it?”

Vincent nodded, the candlelight glinting red in his mane. “I was stunned. And pleased. I know that we'll need the curtain and the door...but such things were never...I believed I'd be eternally alone until I met you.”

“You'll never be alone again,” Catherine replied, thinking of their love, of how many changes it had wrought in her own life and trying to imagine the isolation he'd lived with for so long. She smiled up at him, impishly. “Though you may come to wish you were. I'm not perfect, Vincent; I'm cross when I don't get my coffee, and I am not a morning person. Just ask Joe.” 

He chuckled, the raspy laugh she loved to hear. “I'm awake a good part of the night and I tend to sleep in late. You may never make it to work on time again. What ever will people say?”

“That we're in love,” she responded, laughing herself at the gentle mockery in his voice. Catherine stood and came to stand near him, and Vincent pulled her into the shelter of his arms. The scent of him was candle-light and damp earth and a wilder, spicy scent that was all his own. 

“I'm sorry,” Vincent murmured, “you'll get your dress wet---I'm not fully dry.”

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his neck and felt him shiver at her touch. “Who's complaining? I'm not.” 

He laughed, bending his forehead to hers. “So I see.” 

***

“You’ve got something on your nose,” Catherine said.   
“Do I?” Vincent asked softly and was startled all over again when she kissed the very tip of his nose. He thought of the dust and dirt he’d just washed away and wished he’d not been so quick to clean up. “We’ll miss the concert,” he reminded her, though his hands, rubbing her back---her bare back, he noticed with another thrill of surprise and wonder---seemed to care as little as Catherine herself did. 

“Pfft,” Catherine said, nuzzling his neck. “Concert? What concert?” 

With whatever remaining sense he had, Vincent stepped back. “Wait, I need to…” he gestured towards the curtain.

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “We can’t waste Cullen’s gift. That would be rude.”

Vincent chuckled. Dropping the curtain, he turned back to Catherine and noticed how the candlelight, now that the curtain had blocked most of the light from the corridor, turned her eyes a dark green. Forest green, Vincent thought, then smiled, thinking how wonderful it was that he should know, through her, the colors of places he’d never see. But then...fool to say “never.” They had survived to reach this place, after all, and who knew what wonders might yet be in store for them? 

“I love that smile you have on your face,” Catherine murmured.

“Which smile would that be, my Catherine?” he asked. 

Her fingers traced his strange mouth and the smile, quite beyond his own control, grew larger. It probably exposed all his fangs, Vincent thought, but he couldn't bring himself to care. “It's that smile,” Catherine said, “the one that says you're happy and content and you don't much care who knows it. I never saw it before.”

Mindful of his claws, Vincent brushed a falling lock of hair out of Catherine's eyes. “I never had reason to smile like that before. Now I do,” he said, and kissed her. His heart sped up, a spinning carousel of joy and wonder and love, as her lips touched his. Her hands roamed the fur of his chest, grasped the thick, dense hair at the base of his neck and Vincent heard his breath stutter. How had she known, when _he_ hadn't?

The resonance in their bond, Catherine's love and need, were all the reassurance he needed that she wanted this, wanted him. This...what they were, what they were becoming, here and now, was necessary. He didn't ask her if she was sure; she was, as sure as breath, as life, as the future of their life together. But there were other matters to be concerned with, presently. ”Catherine,” Vincent said, “what about...?”

She glanced down at his hand where it rested, ever so gently, on her stomach, and smiled, a woman's smile that promised a future he'd never dared dream for himself. “Someday, but not today,” Catherine whispered into his chest. She looked up at him. “I...made arrangements, during my last appointment with Peter before you became so ill.”

Her appointment with Peter. Catherine had mentioned it in passing---just after their last encounter with Elliott Burch---but he'd been quite oblivious as to to any other significance the appointment might have had. “You...thought of me like that?” he asked, frankly stunned.

Catherine chuckled, nestling against his chest, playing with the fur there and tickling him just a bit. “My God, Vincent, after the balcony...the rosebush...how could I not?”

Vincent felt his skin heat again...but this time, with an odd sort of pride. She had desired him, even then. “Oh, Vincent,” she continued, sensing the direction of his thoughts, “I wanted you long before then, but after the balcony, I knew you felt the same.”

Oh, yes, he had wanted her, yearned for her---much to his own consternation---shame at desiring her so much half-mingled with the love that muttered _Why not?_ “I was....” Vincent began, fumbling for the words, until he remembered one of the Other's sardonic phrases from the shadows of Elysium. “...not terribly bright,” he finished. 

Catherine's lilting laugh was muted against his chest but he felt her joy through their bond. “That's one way of putting it,” she said when she finally stopped chuckling. Her green eyes met his and her fingers trailed up his chest to the back of his neck again. “But you've....gotten smarter?”

Vincent kissed her, feeling her back shiver as his hands---the hands he'd once thought so monstrous and hateful---touched her. “I have,” he murmured against her mouth, in that instant before all thought left. He ran his hands through the silk of her hair, loving the feel of it. Catherine was close enough that he could see the pulse point at her neck and smell the scent of her---sunshine, love, light---as it rose stronger with her desire. “You are so beautiful,” Vincent murmured against her throat. 

“So are you,” she nearly purred, running her hands through the fur that traced his spine, a caress that made his thoughts go pleasantly hazy and fractured. “And one of us is wearing too many clothes.”

Vincent glanced down at himself, bare-chested, wearing only the faded, patched jeans he normally wore when working on one of the repair crews. Abruptly, he noticed that Catherine was still fully dressed in the gown she'd planned to wear to the concert that night. It was a peculiar shade of blue, he saw, a shade that shifted and shimmered in the light, going to green where the candlelight touched it. “I'm still damp,” he said, not wanting to damage the fabric and astonished all over again that not only did she want to be here with him, but that he felt no fear himself, only what he supposed was a natural nervousness.

Something stirred in Catherine's green eyes as she looked at him. “It clasps at the neck,” she murmured, reaching behind to try and unhook it. “I can't seem to get this...would you mind?”

It occurred to Vincent that she'd been perfectly able to hook the dress by herself, but if it was a ploy, he didn't mind. She turned around and he unhooked the clasp. Then she undid the zipper on the skirt, and the dress fell to the ground. “Catherine,” he whispered, gazing at the satin and lace of her underthings, his mouth gone suddenly dry, “do you always have such...things under your clothes?”

She chuckled, a wicked, happy sound. “Wouldn't you like to know?” 

“I did ask,” Vincent replied mildly, grinning, watching as she stepped out of the dress and placed it carefully on the back of the chair. All at once, he felt the urge to help her out of the rest of her clothes, to see her undressed. 

“Vincent,” she said, and her voice held a note in it he'd not heard before. “I am yours as you are mine. If you want to...help, all you have to do is come here. But,” she continued and her voice held that teasing tone he loved to hear, “you should realize that turnabout is fair play.” Catherine sat down on the edge of his bed and gazed at him, waiting.

He could not have stayed away from her if an earthquake had struck the tunnels. Kneeling in front of her, he removed her shoes and set them aside, then carefully eased the last of her satin underthings down her legs. Her skin was warm and soft and smooth under the callouses of his hands. She made a soft moan—perhaps only his ears would have heard it---when his hands rested on her thighs and gooseflesh rose on her smooth skin. 

“I want to see you,” Catherine said, voice low, green eyes dark with want and need and love. 

When Vincent had allowed himself to visualize this moment, he'd always expected to feel embarrassed and worried over what she would think when she finally saw him without all the layers of clothing. Would she compare him to the other men she had known, and find him wanting? Would she be disgusted by the fur that covered him, by the touch of his claws on her skin? But now that the moment was truly here...he felt none of these things. Catherine wanted him, not some other man; their bond fairly sang with her desire and love. She loved him, needed him, in spite of all that he was and wasn't. And for the first time in his life, Vincent allowed that certainty to silence all his ghosts. 

His long hair brushed her thighs as Vincent rose from his kneeling position. His hands went to the waistband of his jeans, but struggled with the top button. The jeans were old, snug but comfortable, but the fabric was strained further with his arousal. The button fought all his earnest attempts to loosen it and when he was tempted to use his claws and solve the problem once and for all, Catherine came to stand in front of him and gently worked it free. “Better?” she asked, smiling, her breasts rising against his chest as she breathed. 

“Much,” Vincent said in relief, lowering the jeans. He meant to kick the pants to the side, but one leg was caught, tangled in the fabric, and if it had not been for Catherine's arms steadying him, he would have lost his balance. Catherine collapsed in helpless laughter as he sat down in the chair and tossed the jeans into a corner. “I'm sorry, Vincent,” she managed between giggles, “but I've never seen you...unbalanced before.”

He returned her smile, realizing the picture he must have presented and not truly minding her laughter. “Tonight is a night for firsts, isn't it?” 

“That it is,” Catherine said, smiling, nuzzling his neck, her flesh warm against his, and Vincent felt his pulse begin to gallop. She reached up and pulled his head down. “It's time to stop talking, don't you think?” she murmured against his lips. 

Her scent called to him, pulling him in, drawing her near. It seemed to bypass all rational thought and insisted with the hammer of an ancient, primal drum-beat: Woman. Mate. Mine. The growl rose from his throat unbidden, but this time, Vincent didn't back away in horror. It was a part of him, as surely as his blue eyes or the clawed hands that caressed Catherine's back. He nuzzled her throat where the scent rose strongest and her own faint moan of pleasure encouraged him as her hands clenched again in the fur that traced his spine. 

Mindful of his claws, Vincent traced a delicate caress down her chest. “Show me,” he asked. “I want this to be right.”

Catherine smiled, and ran her hands through his unruly hair. “Love, you're here now,” she replied. “That's right enough.”

“But--” he began until her finger on his lips silenced him. “There is no 'right' to this, Vincent,” Catherine said, her gamin smile surfacing. “Don't be afraid to touch me out of some idea that what you feel isn't right or natural.” Taking his hand, she tugged him towards the bed. “Remember, doctor's orders.”

He laughed then, all tension gone, remembering Father's “advice” just after they had awakened from Elysium. “Far be it from me to disagree with medical orders,” Vincent agreed. Turning down the quilts, he climbed into bed and Catherine curled next to him. 

Just as he was settling the quilts over them, Vincent heard faint limping footsteps outside his chamber. “I don't believe this,” he muttered, torn between amusement at their predicament and annoyance that having the curtain down wasn't enough to deter his parent from interrupting them. Clearly, they were going to need the door much sooner, rather than later.

Catherine looked at him, bemused. “What?” she whispered. 

“Speak of the devil and you see his horns,” Vincent murmured and Catherine's eyes widened. “He's not----” she said, just as Father's voice rang out through the velvet curtain. 

“Ah, Vincent,” Father said. “I didn't see you at the concert. Are you all right?”

“Quite well,” Vincent replied, as Catherine muffled her giggles against his shoulder. “I am merely...following your orders and staying in bed.” 

Vincent fancied he could feel the heat from the older man's blush across the room. “Ah...yes. Is Catherine...well...then, too?”

Her laughter shaking the bed with mirth, Vincent gave the only answer he could. “She is very well also, Father. Could we perhaps finish this conversation later?” 

“Yes, yes of course, Vincent,” Father said hastily. “Good night...um...to the both of you.”

Vincent waited until his parent's retreating steps could no longer be heard then turned to his fiancee, who was quaking with laughter. “I'm just picturing his face,”   
Catherine said when she regained enough breath to speak. “Why do I feel like I just got caught necking on the sofa with my boyfriend?”

Vincent raised one eyebrow. “Perhaps because we nearly did get caught...necking...on my bed?”

“True,” Catherine said, still grinning, clearly unrepentant. She pushed the hair out of her face. “So, where were we?”

Vincent propped his head on one hand, while the other cupped one breast. “I believe I was here,” he said, lightly kneading the softness. He opened his mouth slightly, tasting the warm pulsing scent of her arousal in the cool still air. The bond sang with her intent, her need and even if it hadn't, what she wanted was plain enough. He bent to take one breast in his mouth and she arched against him, her hands going to the thick, dense hair at the nape of his neck and causing his breath to stutter.   
His hands, it seemed, had a will of their own; they traced the curves of her, the hidden softness he'd long imagined but never thought to actually experience. The taste of her was salt and satin, need and desire and he was becoming lost in the sensations of her need doubling his own when she pulled him up for a gentle kiss. “I want this to last,” Catherine murmured by way of explanation. She ran her hands up his furred arms. “You feel so good.”

“I...do?” Vincent asked, gathering his scattered thoughts. It had never occurred to him that she might like the fur that covered his body, not when he had so frequently been annoyed by it.

“Mmm...hmm,” she replied. “It's soft and I love what it feels like.” Her hand traced lower. “Well, well, it's not quite as soft here,” Catherine teased. 

Vincent found himself becoming more aroused, if such a thing were possible. He tried to capture her hand but Catherine only laughed as her hand darted away from him. It seemed as though her hands were everywhere, teasing and tickling and he gave into the fun of her teasing, her own wonder and joy cascading through their bond. Tickling her lightly in return, he murmured, “Turnabout is fair play,” and her laugh was like the song of birds to his ears. 

***  
Catherine tilted her head, smiling at the look of love and joy in his eyes. “What are you thinking?” she asked. 

He didn't reply for a time, running the back of one soft furred hand along the side of her neck and down her chest. It should have tickled, but it didn't. It felt...good. _Better than good,_ she thought, laughing inwardly at Mouse's fractured phrasing being used in this context. “I am thinking,” Vincent finally said, as his hands continued their slow stroking, “that you are beautiful, that you have changed me and I no longer know who I was before you.”

She remembered the conversation she'd had with Peter, during the long, worrying days and nights of his illness and nodded. That other Catherine, who hadn't known of Vincent or this place or these people, seemed a distant, uncharted memory now. “I know,” she murmured as his gentle touch stirred fire along her nerves. In the candlelight, he seemed carved out of golden amber, all the shades of copper and bronze except for the startling blue of his eyes. And it occurred to her that here was a new miracle, in Vincent's complete and utter ease with her, with himself. They had traveled a long, hard road to get here, but if this was the result, Catherine could only be thankful. 

The slow fire he was igniting with every touch must have shown on her face or echoed through their bond because his expression changed and the hunger, the need in his face captivated her. He pulled her into his arms and their mouths met in a kiss far removed from the gentle, teasing ones of earlier. Catherine heard the low, needy growl begin in his throat again and something wild and untamed inside her rose to that call. 

The taste of Vincent was like late summer's rain...unexpected and startling but welcome too. She traced the sharp fierceness of his fangs with her tongue and felt the last glimmer of his fears disappear like mist in sunlight. Her hands grasped the longer, silky fur that lay in a gentle wave down his back and felt rather than heard the slow rhythmic rumble begin. His arousal rose, strong and fierce against her inner thigh.

The lush copper curtain of his hair fell over her in a wild torrent as his lips traced a fiery trail down her neck. She grasped the firm muscles of his back to urge him closer and heard him gasp. His eyes---wide, blue, and very, very dark---met hers, the question plain. “Oh, yes,” Catherine murmured, nuzzling him. “I need you too.” 

Their bond swelled wider as they joined and his thoughts were as clear as if he had spoken aloud.... _this...I never knew...oh, love, I must..._ Vincent began to move inside her in an ancient rhythm, unknown to him but unchanged through time. She kissed whatever she could reach---the line of a broad shoulder, the long, bare, lines of his neck, the strange softness of his mouth---and the rumble grew louder. 

It seemed to Catherine that a bonfire of dancing light was growing inside their bond—did it come from him? Her? She didn't know, and didn't care, but in the instant the fiery light rose highest, she clasped him close and they fell into the light together. 

***

When Vincent came back to himself, when he remembered what words were and how to use them, it was to find Catherine in his arms, resting against his heart and playing with his chest hair. “You alive?” she asked, a wide, happy grin on her face. 

He took a deep breath, summoning the words that had so recently deserted him. “I believe so, yes,” Vincent replied. He ran one hand down the silken curves of her body. “And you?”

“Mmm...well...” Catherine said, stretching lazily, “I could use a little mouth-to-mouth if you're not sure.” 

“It'll be terribly difficult,” Vincent said, grinning, enjoying the sight of her, “but for you, I think I can manage.” He leaned over and kissed her soundly just to prove the point. After a time, they broke apart and Catherine smiled at him with a dazed, happy expression he knew must also be on his own face. “Yup, I'm definitely alive,” she said, “I've got the pounding heart to prove it.”

He couldn't help it. Her joy and love flooded their bond and the laughter bubbled up. Soon, Catherine joined him and they laughed until they were breathless all over again. “What time is it, do you think?” she asked when they were finally able to stop chuckling. 

“Past dinner, I'm sure,” Vincent said. “I'm sure I heard William bang out the 'last call' message on the pipes a few minutes ago.” He propped his head up on one hand. “Are you hungry?”

“Now that you mention it, a little,” Catherine replied, idly playing with a lock of his hair. “But that would mean moving from this room, and I'm not quite ready for that yet.” 

“Nor am I,” Vincent said, laying back against the bolsters and pulling her near, her hair flowing over his shoulder in a river of silk. He gazed down at the picture they made, legs intertwined, bodies pressed close, and wondered just why he had feared this for so long. That lead to other thoughts and a shadow of his old worries rose up. But the fears were only a shadow, not the overwhelming flood he would once have battled. Still, he had to know. “Catherine, I haven't done this before...was it...did I....”

She nuzzled his neck and Vincent had the distinct impression that if she could purr, she would. “It was beautiful and right and past all that I ever dreamed when I thought of us.” Her bright green eyes stared into his own. “You did know I dreamed of us like this?”

Vincent nodded, pleased and humbled all over again that she'd had the strength to believe in the dream of their life together even when he hadn't. “Yes, and you also had some...fantasies at work, did you not?” he asked dryly. 

Catherine flushed a bright pink. “How did you....?” She buried her face in the side of his neck. “Oh, no, tell me I didn't make things...difficult for you down here.” 

He smiled a wry smile, remembering. “Not all of our bathing pools are warm ones, Catherine.” He pulled her back just a little to look at her. “But honestly...I didn't mind. I was perplexed--”

“Perplexed?” Catherine asked. 

“I...was stunned that you could desire me so, and confused by it, when you could have had anyone....normal.” Vincent pressed one finger to her lips, to stifle the protest he knew was coming. “Catherine, that was then...and I understand now.” 

He didn't need to say where he'd gained the understanding. Catherine smiled, turning her head to press a kiss into his palm, which caused his heart rate to speed up all over again. “Elysium.”

Vincent nodded. “Elysium.” He pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head, then looked into her green eyes. “My only regret is that I put you through so much to get to this place.”

She shook her head. “No regrets, Vincent. We're here, now.” 

Catherine nestled against him, and for a time they were silent, listening to the muted tapping on the pipes, the sounds of the tunnel world settling down to a quiet night. Vincent glanced around the chamber and his eye fell on the small collection of nick-knacks on the shelf just under his stained glass window. He blinked, and blinked again. 

“What is it, Vincent?” Catherine asked. 

“Do you notice something different about what's on the shelf?” Vincent asked, wondering if he was seeing things. 

“There's that shell I brought you from LA, the quartz rocks that Kipper and Samantha found near the Mirror Pool and your statue of Selket and...” her voice trailed off. “Vincent, that statue wasn't there before, was it?”

He shook his head. “No. I've never owned a statue of Ma'at. And I don't believe it was here before Elysium.” 

Catherine's chin rested on her folded hands as she looked at him. “What do you think it means?”

Vincent picked up the little bronze statue of the kneeling goddess with her ostrich feather headdress and smiled, placing it back on its shelf next to the statue of Selket. “I don't think it has to mean anything...except to remind us not to forget what we learned.” He stroked Catherine's back, knowing she enjoyed the feel of his fur against her skin. “As for how it got there....maybe it's magic.”

She didn't dispute it or try to find some rational explanation as she once would have. “Love and joy and magic. Is there a better way to start our life together?”

“No,” Vincent said, and covered her mouth with his own. 

THE END


End file.
